2 
YORKSHIRE NATURALISTS AT HALIFAX. 
The Seventy-first Annual Meeting of the Union was held at 
the Bankfield Museum, Halifax, on December ioth, 1932. 
Both the General Committee Meeting and that at which 
Prof. A. Gilligan, D.Sc., delivered his Presidential Address 
on ‘ Sand Grains and Sandstones/ were better attended than 
any similar meetings held for many years past. The Mayor 
of Halifax (Councillor Wm. Crabtree, J.P.) gave a warm 
official welcome to the Union, and expressed his best wishes 
for the continued success of its activities ; the appreciation 
of the Union shown by this public recognition was ably 
voiced by Prof. Gilligan. 
An unusual item in the day’s programme was a presentation 
made to a retiring official, Mr. Thomas Sheppard, M.Sc., who 
had been Editor of The Naturalist from January, 1903, until 
December, 1932. Prof. Gilligan, in asking Mr. Sheppard to 
accept a portrait of himself, painted by his friend, Mr. Vincent 
Galloway (City of Hull Art Gallery), spoke of his unremitting 
work in the interests of the Union since he first became a 
member in 1897. Mr. Sheppard had been Hon. Secretary, 
Editor, and President of the Union (1908). Prof. Gilligan 
also paid a special tribute to Mr. Sheppard for the enormous 
amount of work represented by the publication of his 
Bibliography of Yorkshire Geology,’ which had placed 
geologists under a debt of gratitude for all time. Yorkshire 
Naturalists were highly appreciative of these many and 
varied services on behalf of the Union, and it gave him the 
greatest possible pleasure, as President of the Union, to 
hand Mr. Sheppard his portrait and a cheque representing 
the joint subscriptions of over a hundred individual members, 
as well as a number of the Scientific Societies affiliated with 
the Union. 
Mr. Sheppard, in acknowledging the gift, said he was 
deeply touched by this recognition, and spoke of his early 
association with the Union and of the knowledge of the 
county he had gained by that means, as well as of the friend- 
ships he had formed among the scientific workers with whom 
he was thus brought into contact. Although he was resigning 
the Editorship on medical advice, it was his earnest desire 
that he might still keep in active touch with the work of the 
Union, and with the pages of The Naturalist, which were now 
passing into other hands. 
In the evening members were entertained by the Halifax 
Scientific Society at a Conversazione. The Circle of Micro- 
scopy, under the direction of Mr. J. A. Wade, displayed 
exhibits illustrating the biological foundations of inheritance 
which proved very attractive and highly informative. Fine 
The Naturalist 
