PROCEEDINGS 
GEOLOGICAL & POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY 
Of tfie a®est=Mtfft'ng of Sorftsijfro, 
AT THE FORTIETH MEETING, HEED IN THE EECTURE ROOM 
OF THE HALIFAX PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY 
SOCIETY, ON THURSDAY, JUNE 6tH, 1850 . 
The Rev. William Turner, having been voted to the 
Chair, introduced the business of the meeting in an appro- 
priate address, and regretted the unavoidable absence of the 
Venerable Archdeacon Musgrave, and John Waterhouse, 
Esq., F.R.S., the President of the Philosophical Society, 
both of whom took a warm interest in the proceedings of 
the Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding 
of Yorkshire. He had long watched with pleasure its 
operations — and noticed the various important communica- 
tions which had been brought before its meetings, and he 
was glad to find that two subjects of such great interest as 
the Electric Light and Dia-Magnetism would be brought 
before them that day, and especially the former of these 
communications. He believed it was the intention of Mr. 
Dresser to describe a new and economic process for pro- 
ducing this extraordinary phenomenon, which he considered 
a great desideratum; as, in too many scientific discoveries, 
however apparently beneficial in their object, the expense 
involved was such as to place them beyond the reach of 
most persons, and it consequently acted as a check to their 
ever becoming generally useful to the public at large, which 
VOL. III. 
H 
