464 
JUBILEE MEETING. — MARQUIS OF RIPON. 
The Most Noble Cliairnian then delivered the following 
address : — 
Ladies and Gentlemen, — I now rise for the purpose of proposing 
the adoption of the report and financial statement which you have 
just lieard read, and of submitting to you a few observations connected 
with the circumstances under which we are gathered together to-day. 
You will not naturally imagine that I am about to deliver a lecture 
upon geology or upon any scientific subject. 1 hope I know much 
too well to undertake the risk of speaking upon any matters of that 
kind in the presence of the great masters of science we have here 
to-day, whose presence we welcome so cordially. But it may 
perhaps be of interest to them, as well as to \is, if I very briefly 
remind you of the course which this society has run during the fifty 
years of its existence — (applause) — for, as you have been already 
told, we are met here to-day in the Jubileee 3^ear of this society. We 
have been celebrating another Jubilee during the course of the present 
year, which has called forth the warmest feelings of the people in 
every part of the country. But we, of this Yorkshire Geological and 
Polytechnic Society may, very justly I think, rejoice that our 
society has attained to the respectable age of 50 years, during which 
time I venture to think it has done goad work in this country in the 
promotion and advancement of science. (Hear, hear.) As you are 
aware, this society was originally started as a West Riding Society, 
and was at the commencement and for a considerable number of years 
confined in its operations to the West Riding of Yorkshire, It had 
a thoroughly practical origin. It took its inception from a conviction 
which had spread in the year 1837, among the coal proprietors of the 
West Riding, and those interested in the coal mining industry, that 
it was of great importance to their interests as owners of collieries that 
geological science should be studied in this part of the country, and 
that geological investigations should be carried on, especially in 
connection with the coal fields of Yorkshire. And from that founda- 
tion the society rose. I think that, built upon that foundation it was 
very solidly based, and we owe much of the success which has since 
attended it to the fact that it had from the beginning this direct and 
most useful connection with one of the great industries of our county. 
