MARQUIS OF KIPON, K.G., F.R.S. 
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manner, and whatever they did should be done with the utmost 
thoroughness they could command. The true spirit of an in- 
vestigator should be a modest, teachable, reverent spirit, that of 
a man open to receive all facts from whatever quarter they might 
come, ready to test them to the utmost, and ready to accept the 
conclusions to which these facts might lead. Surely it must be 
encouraging to all, and particularly to young students of science, to 
know, that providing they devoted themselves to their studies in the 
maimer he had attempted to describe, that new fields of ever-increasing 
beauty, attraction, and delight would be open to them, though they 
might never reach the end. On January 14th, 1880, his Lordship 
presided at a meeting held at Halifax, and referred in his opening 
address, at some length, to the investigation then proceeding at the 
Raygill Fissure. He also spoke of the extension of the Society's 
operations to the North and East Riding. He trusted that this 
extension would prove successful, and give an impulse to the study 
of geological science in those parts of Yorkshire, remarking that it 
must be borne in mind that the visits of the Society to different 
parts of the county were not merely intended to benefit the members 
of the Society themselves, but the meetings and excursions being 
open to others they were intended to propagate an interest in science, 
and to encourage its study in the districts which they might visit. 
He then entered at considerable length on the question of general 
education, and its beariugs and relationship to the teaching of science 
in this country, and deprecated too great an interference by the state 
in higher education. He believed the latter was not an imaginary 
danger, and he submitted the consideration to those who were dis- 
satisfied with the English system of teaching. In all experimental 
branches of knowledge the first essential element of success was 
freedom ; freedom of investigation, freedom of discussion, the honest 
search of facts, the faithful report of them, and their unprejudiced 
examination. One of the great objects of this Society was to en- 
courage individual enquiry, to collect facts ail over the surface of 
this great county, and to test the truth and reality of the facts so 
collected by open and free discussions at the meetings of the Society. 
He thought the Society should devote special attention to young men 
