PREFACE. 
Witli the close of the first fifty years of tlie existence of this 
Society and the celebration of its Jubilee, came a desire that its 
history, so far as it could be gleaned, together with some notice of 
its principal members, should be written : the Council of the Society 
did me the honour to place this important trust in my hands. The 
work has presented some difficulties, and reliable information 
referring to its early years has proved scarce, notwithstanding this 
it is hoped that a work of some interest, even beyond the circle of 
the members of the Society, has been produced. 
The history of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society 
comprises a period during which the development of Geological 
science has been very rapid. Little more than twent)^ years previously 
William Smith was laboriously laying the foundations of strati- 
graphical geology, and deducing the sequence of the rocks by com- 
paring those of East Yorkshire with the strata he knew so well in the 
neighbourhood of Bath. Professor Adam Sedgwick ten years before 
the foundation of the Society had communicated to the Geological 
Society of London the result of his researches on the Magnesian 
Limestone of Yorkshire : and during the early years of the Society's 
existence Professor J^hn Phillips wrote his classical description of 
the Sea Coast and the Mountain Limestone of the county. Dean 
Buckland in 1823 published the Reliquee Diluviana, in which he 
recorded the investigation of the Kirkdale Cave, the first systematic 
exploration of the kind carried out in this country. Since that time 
a marvellous expansion of the science has taken place, and its ramifi- 
cations extend over nearly the whole surface of the globe. Together 
