16 
REPORT OF THE 
Council, and one of the vice-presidents. The Society is more 
especially indebted to him for his services as curator of meteor¬ 
ology. His records of daily observations in connection with 
this department extend over more than forty years. We are 
glad to add that since Mr. Ford’s decease these records have 
been presented to the Society, and are now deposited in the 
library. Mr. Ford was also much interested in the study of 
astronomy, and as long as his health permitted he was in the 
habit of using the instruments in the Society’s observatory. He 
died on the 16th of August last, in his 75th year. 
Whilst the department of meteorology has thus suffered loss 
in the removal of the gentleman above-named, that of natural 
history has lost one who for a long series of years has taken a 
great interest in it, and who has left behind him enduring 
memorials of his zeal and industry. Our late vice-president, 
Thomas Allis, Esq., who also held the office of Curator of Com¬ 
parative Anatomy, connected himself with the Society very soon 
after he came to York to occupy the position of superintendent 
of the Friends’ Eetreat. Naturally fond of scientific pursuits, 
he selected ornithology, and especially the comparative anatomy 
of birds, as an object for study, and one that might serve 
as a mental relief from the cares and anxieties of his official 
position. The result of these labours, which were carried on 
either before the ordinary duties of the day were begun, or after 
they were ended, is seen in the unique and magnificent collection 
of skeletons that enriches our Museum. In the course of his 
labours his attention was often called to peculiarities of structure 
in the different species of birds, and these he placed on record in 
papers read at meetings of the Society, many of which papers 
are published in our transactions. One of the most striking 
of these was that in which he noted the peculiarities of the bony 
plates that form the sclerotic ring in the eyes of birds ; on this 
subject he read an exhaustive paper before the members of the 
Biitish Association, at their meeting in York, in 1844, and it 
afforded him peculiar pleasure to be able to point out that in 
this respect the extinct Dodo and the genus Columbidoe are 
alike ; thus strengthening the position assumed by his Mend 
Hugh Strickland, in his beautiful work The Dodo and its 
