114 
THE FUTURE EXTENSION OF THE SOCIETY. BY THE MARQUIS 
OF RIPON, (president). 
The President, in moving the adoption of the Annual Report, 
congratulated the Society upon its position. The Society continued to 
hold its own as regarded numbers, though he might remark that it was 
not in the nature of scientific societies of that description to increase 
their number of members to any large extent. Indeed, he did not 
know, from one point of view, whether tliey should very much 
desire any sudden increase in the number of members of a society of 
that description, because what they wished was the benefit of the 
Society, and it was certainly of some im])ortance that the Society 
should be composed of men who were interested in the investigations 
and work of science. What they wished to see was a steady advance. 
There was one matter alluded to in the report which was of vital 
interest to the Society, and that was tlie assistance they received 
from their local secretaries. All of them wlio had been connected 
with the Society knew very well that >\fr. Davis had done a 
good work, and that his services had been of tlie most vahiable 
character. An allusion had also been made to the history of the last 
fifty years of the Society ; we celebrated its jubilee last year. Looking 
back over the last fifty years, as they were called upon to do on that 
occasion, they felt that the work wliicli had been done in the half 
century was not at all discreditable to the Society in whose interests 
they were now met, and it was very desirable that an adequate record 
should be kept of the proceedings during the period he liad named. 
The aggregate of these investigations, when they were brought together, 
as they would be in the book or history referred to, would become of 
real value, real scientific value, and it would be recognized by scientific 
men when they were able to read the record of those labours. He was 
further led to refer to the investigations conducted by the Society 
with regard to the coal-fields of Yorkshire. Plans and maps had 
been prepared by members of the Society before the Geological 
Survey was entered upon, and from those facts it became evident the 
efforts of the Society had not only been in the interests of the geo- 
logical investigations, but that the interests of commerce, the com- 
