JOHN PHILLIPS, F.R.S. 
123 
been resident in York for five years, having the care of the Yorkshire 
Museum and the office of secretary of the Yorksliire Philosophical 
Society. In this capacity it was my good fortune to be associated 
with Mr. W. V. Harcourt, the first president of that Society, and to 
assist in the establishment of the great association which he had so 
large a share in organising, with Brewster, Forbes, Johnstone, Mur- 
chison, and Daubeny. After this the whole book of my life has been 
open for the public to read. Educated in no college I have professed 
geology in three universities, and in each have found this branch of 
science firmly supported by scholars, philosophers, and divines." 
In the preface to the first edition of that delightful book, " The 
Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coasts of Yorkshire," pubhshed in 1852, 
Professor Phillips says: — "From childhood my attention has been 
fixed on the great county in which most of the labours and enjoyments 
of my life have been experienced. Long before my eyes rested on 
the mountains of the North of England, the mighty form of Ingle- 
borough was engraved in my imagination by many a vivid description, 
and when I crossed the old Gothic bridge and beheld the glorious 
church which is the pride and veneration of Yorkshire it was but the 
realisation of a long-indulged dream of boyhood. There is indeed a 
large harvest to reap and much inducement to gather it. The physical 
geography and scenery of the county had been too little considered ; 
the various elements of climate which reign on its long line of 
romantic coast, its broad fertile valleys and ranges of barren mountains 
(but little inferior to their neighbours in Cumberland) had not been 
recorded ; the vast spaces of new land which art and nature had 
conquered from the sea, had yielded more rents than reflections ; the 
roads and camps of the Romans, and the earlier sites of Brigantian 
tribes are travelled over, with little thought of the ages to which 
they belong." It appears to have been in this spirit that Professor 
PhilHps on his entry into Yorkshire in 1819 pursued his geological 
and other scientific investigations, and he has recorded in the 
introduction to the second volume of his Geology of Yorkshire," 
his journeyings to and fro in pursuit of geological knowledge. He 
says : — ''In 1819, I made, under the guidance of my uncle, William 
Smith, my first examination of the limestone of Yorkshire, and 
