YORKSHIRE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
REPORT OF THE COUNCIL, 
PRESENTED TO THE ANNUAL MEETING, FEB. 4, 1840. 
The Council of tbe Yorkshire Philosophkal Society, on 
presenting the Report of their Proceedings since the last 
Annual Meeting, are desirous of directing the attention of 
the Members to those circumstances which mark the actual 
state or indicate the future progress of the Institution. 
The Society includes at this moment three hundred and 
twenty-nine subscribing Members ; a greater number than 
was ever before registered on the books. During the past 
year twenty-seven new Members have been elected, but we 
have lost by death or removal nine. We have to record in 
our list of departed friends and fellow-labourers two of the 
founders of the Society, whose names stand first on our roll 
of Members, and whose rich collections from Kirkdale Cave,, 
were conspicuous among the earliest donations to. the infant 
Museum. Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Salmond lived to see an 
almost private Society expand into a Yorkshire Institution,, 
and a few specimens from one locality become surrounded by 
many thousand objects, the various productions of distant 
lands and seas. Yet amidst that large assemblage of the 
diversified treasures of nature, the series of Kirkdale bones,, 
though filling but one of a hundred cases, is still the centre 
of strongest attraction, a cherished memorial of the men and 
the motives which originated our Institution:.. 
A 4 
