YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS’ UNION—ANNUAL MEETING. 229 
F.GS., F.L.S., F.S.A., Mayor of Halifax, and an old and prominent 
member of the Union. 
The minutes of the previous annual meeting having been printed 
and circulated were taken as read, as was also the Annual Report 
which appears on pages 219-223 of ‘The Naturalist.’ 
€ excursion-programme for 1891 having been announced to 
the meeting, the Chairman called upon the Right Rev. W. W. How, 
D.D., Lord Bishop of Wakefield, to deliver the Annual Presidential 
Address, entitled ‘The Study of Natural Science.’ 
e€ Bishop, who had a cordial reception, said he had not for 
years been able to do anything in scientific studies, except of a 
most casual and superficial character. But his interest in scientific 
matters could never, he thought, decline. He thought they had 
learnt in these latter days that a patient collection of facts was a 
_ key which opened the gate of all new avenues of discovery, and 
of all enlargements of their area of knowledge. Of course very 
few single minds could combine powers of minute observation, of 
delicate comparison, of intuitive recognition of the true bearing of 
phenomena, with a a large grasp of general principles, and a profound 
skill in fitting all details into the great theories which characterised 
a Darwin. Darwin seemed to combine all the powers which could 
contribute to the advancement of science. He was a thinker, 
and a collector of facts—he was, indeed, he supposed, one of the 
most oobi minds for the prosecution of natural 
Science which could conceive of. But though few could 
an illustration of this point, the Bishop mentioned the splendid 
astronomical discoveries at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century. Tycho in Denmark, Kepler in Germany, and Galileo in 
Italy, working each in his own way to accomplish results which 
were to shake the world. No one of these could have won the 
accurate observation, and to record carefully what they vay ges 
Take, for example, botany—say a plant new to the region where 
was found, such as the 4venarta gothica, discovered at mibblehendt 
last year. This meant not only an interesting find, but a contribu- 
tion to far larger fields of inquiry, such as the distribution of the 
flora throughout the world, the modes and causes of that distribution, 
the changes in the surface of the earth, and the like. So, whatever 
branch of science they undertook, let them gather facts, be accurate, 
and record carefully, But as a Bishop, with a charge of the 
August 1897. 
