378 



the proceedings of all these bodies, but will confine my remarks to 

 such of them as have more particularly originated in the efforts of geo- 

 logists, miners, and fossil collectors. 



The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall is to be revered as the 

 precursor of all these provincial institutions j and the value of its 

 Transactions must have been fully appreciated by many whom 1 now 

 address. 



The Philosophical Society of York may be said to owe its origin to 

 the ardent and enlightened views of its first President, the Rev. W. 

 Vernon Harcourt, who succeeded so far in rousing the public spirit 

 of that opulent county, that an elegant building has arisen, which 

 is now stored with specimens of natural history and geology, 

 rendered highly instructive by the skill and gor>d arrangement of the 

 Secretary, Mr. Phillips. — A perusal of the annual discourses of Mr. 

 Vernon Harcourt, will enable you to judge of the many advantages 

 which have flowed from this Institution. To the same individual, 

 philosophy has now to record a deeper obligation, for his unremit- 

 ting exertions in modelling and giving permanency of character to 

 that national Institution "The British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science," the first meeting of which was held at the Museum 

 at York in September last*. 



The Institutions of York and Whitby have been imitated by the 

 establishment of others at Leeds, Hull, Halifax, &c. ; and at Scar- 

 borough, where the oolitic series is so admirably and clearly exposed 

 upon the coast, the scientific traveller will now find a new and ap- 

 propriate building, filled with all the local fossils, stratigraphically ar- 

 ranged upon a plan of Mr. W. Smith, by an intelligent curator, Mr. 

 Williamson. The Scarborough coast merits to be specially visited by 

 those geologists, who have had the advantage of studying the oolitic 

 series only on our southern shores, where it puts on a type of so 

 very different a mineralogical character. All zoological analogies can 

 now, however, be promptly and clearly established by a comparison 

 of the contents of the museums of Scarborough and Whitby with 

 that of Bath, which owes its value to the arrangement and zeal of 

 Mr. Lonsdale ; and with that of Bristol, which has been rendered 

 truly important by the penetrating skill and incomparable collec- 

 tions of Mr. Miller, whose loss we all so much deplore. 



The limits of this address prevent my enlarging upon the fossil 

 wealth of many of these Institutions ; and I have, therefore, con- 

 fined myself to the mention of those with which I am personally 



* It is to another Fellow of the Geological Societ}', Dr. (now Sir David) 

 Brewster, we are indebted for the first suggestion of this admirable mode 

 of concentrating the scientific power of the United Kingdom. (See 

 Mr. Harcourt's discourse in the first report of the British Association.) — 

 Geologists will recur with pleasure to the Meeting at York , because in bring- 

 ing the working men of science into communication with individuals of 

 rank and property, it was the means, through the exertions of that ac- 

 complished nobleman, Lord Morpeth, of inducing His Majesty's Govern- 

 ment to grant a well-merited pension to our distinguished fellow-labourer, 

 Mr. W. Smith. 



