PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL AND POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY 
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AT THE FORTY-FIFTH (THE ANNUAL) MEETING, HELD IN THE 
PHILOSOPHICAL HALL, LEEDS, ON THURSDAY, JAN. 22ND, 1857, 
JOHN HOPE SHAW, ESQ., IN THE CHAIR. 
Mr. Shaw said that at the request of the Council of their 
Society he again occupied the honourable position of Presi- 
dent on the occasion of their meeting in Leeds — an honour 
of which he was deeply sensible, but to which he had no 
pretensions whatever on his own account, save the official 
character which he held within those walls. When he 
welcomed the Society to Leeds some years ago, it was in 
the character which he at that time filled of Chief Magis- 
trate of the borough ; and he now welcomed them as the 
President of the Philosophical and Literary Society of Leeds. 
Following the programme of the proceedings of the Society 
for some years past, he saw that the first engagement that 
morning would be the transaction of what they might properly 
call the business of the Society itself : that was, to appoint 
the gentlemen who were to fill the various offices connected 
with the Society for the year upon which they were about 
to enter ; and next, they would receive a statement of the 
financial position of the Society from the Honorary Secretary. 
After that business had been transacted, they would come 
to another principal object of the proceedings of the day, 
namely, the reading of papers. Those papers would be 
chiefly upon subjects which had not, up to that 
