Vol. IX.] 
[Paet I. 
PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
YOKKSHIRE 
GEOLOGICAL AND POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY. 
Edited bt JAMES W. DAVIS, F.S.A., F.G.S., &c. 
1885. 
ON THE WORK AND PROGRESS OF THE SOCIETY. BY THE 
MARQUIS OF EIPON, K.G. (PRESIDENT). 
The Marquis of Ripon, who was received with applause on 
rising- to address the meeting, said it became his duty to make some 
observations to them on taking- the chair on that occasion after an 
absence of five years from the duties of his ofiQce as President of 
that Society. He could assure them that it afforded him great 
pleasure to meet once more the members of the Yorkshire Geologi- 
cal and Polytechnic Society after having been so long separated 
from them, and from his other friends in the county, by the 
public duties which he had been discharging in a distant part of her 
Majesty's dominions. He always felt, when called upon to address 
the members of the society, how very little worthy he was to offer 
any observations to gentlemen who were so much better acquainted 
with the scientific subjects to which the society devoted its atten- 
tion than he was himself, but as it had been now for many years 
their good pleasure, and also their great kindness, to keep him in 
ofiice as their president, he was glad to have from time to time an 
occasion of assuring them how very much he valued that position, 
and how grateful to them he was for continuing to him their confi- 
dence by electing him to fill it. If upon other occasions he had felt 
the diflBculty of addressing men who were his superiors in scientific 
knowledge he felt it very much more in some respects upon that 
