8 
DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. 
the meaning of that epithet. We should hope to find within its 
walls just such a representation of other parts of our land and of 
the rest of the earth as is necessary for purposes of education, but 
we should most of all expect its collections to be rich—nay, un¬ 
rivalled—in memorials of ancient York, of the Yorkshire of your 
forefathers, its natural history and its geology. That is what we 
do find within and around these walls. We cannot approach this 
building without being reminded of an age when the climate of 
Britain may have been even less genial than that of Spitzbergen, 
and ice in some way, not fully ascertained, transported blocks of 
granite from Shap Fell across the Pennine watershed to the valley 
of the Ouse and the Yorkshire coast. Within these walls the 
minerals, rocks and fossils, the fauna and flora, of Yorkshire are 
represented by collections of what you may well be proud ; thanks 
to the work begun by John Phillips and continued by highly 
qualified curators and most liberal benefactors. Your Museum is 
also rich in memorials of man in the ages of stone and bronze and 
iron, and for those of the Roman, in life and in death, we have but 
to visit the ancient guest hall at the lower margin of these grounds. 
Within your boundaries we can find illustrations of almost every 
chapter in the composite history of our nation,—of Briton and 
Saxon, of Dane and Norman, of the labours and the life of our 
forefathers. 
But I must cease lest I weary you with a tale which to most of 
you, no doubt, is already familiar. It remains only for me to 
declare these buildings open, to congratulate the members of the 
Yorkshire Philosophical Society on such important adjuncts to 
their work, and especially on the substitution of this handsome 
lecture theatre for one which had become too small for their needs 
and was never too commodious; to congratulate all the citizens of 
York on this most valuable aid to that kind of education, which, 
so far from ending with our school days, should be continued to 
the evening hours of life ; and to wish the Philosophical Society a 
long and prosperous career. 
