W. DENISON ROEBUCK. F.L.S. : PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 9 
recording various notes and measurements in respect of the 
wearing away of our receding Yorkshire coast-line. 
The Committee appointed to investigate the marine zoology 
and botany of the Yorkshire coast has not attained to any great 
success, and indeed, in this connection, it seems strange that 
Yorkshire should have no systematic investigators of its shore 
and marine life, no one to take up the systematic work done in 
the olden time by such men as William Bean and John 
Leckenby, whose specimens are in all our museums. 
In like case is our Committee for investigating the micro- 
scopic fauna and flora of our fresh waters. Something has been 
done, but nothing of what we might expect had we men to take 
up the study systematically. 
We had a Committee on the Disappearance of Plants, 
which, having completed its work and given its report, was 
disbanded and another, to deal with the protection of Wild 
Birds and their Eggs, holds merely a watching brief. 
Our Bryological Committee and our Coleoptera Committee 
have done good, steady work, reporting annually, and include 
respectively all the best of the Yorkshire students of mosses and 
of beetles, and, I may say, that were all departments of research 
as efficiently supported as these two are by the students of their 
subjects, the Union's work would reach a higher level. 
Of late years, a new line of investigation has been entered 
upon in botany, of which Dr. Wm. G. Smith is the leader, 
in which plants are studied in the mass, and mapped according 
to their associations with each other, and good results have 
been attained. Two sheets of the map have already been 
published for Yorkshire, calculated to be of great value for 
botanical study, and the only improvement that can be here 
suggested, is that the maps should, either on their face or their 
margin, show the exact date when the survey was made, to 
afford a suitable base of comparison with future work. We 
have appointed a Committee to co-operate with Dr. Smith in this 
desirable investigation. 
To conclude the notice of our Committees, we may note 
exceedingly good work done at the Fungus Forays, which form 
so interesting and important a feature in our year's programme. 
The first Fungus Foray we had in Yorkshire was in 1881, 
at Studley and Harrogate. It was followed in 1888 by one at 
Bramham and Harewood, and in 1891 was held the first of a 
series which have taken place annually. We have had the 
benefit of the presence of many distinguished mycologists at 
the gatherings, but more particularly are we indebted to Mr. 
George Massee and Mr. Charles Crossland for the success which 
has attended them. 
The history of our publications practically involves the 
whole history of natural history research in Yorkshire for the 
period of the Union's existence, as most of the work done and 
