COUNCIL FOR 1854. 
19 
introducing their friends personally is one of which they cannot 
avail themselves. They wish therefore that their wives should 
have the same privilege with themselves. The Council has no 
power to grant this privilege, as it involves an alteration in the 
Society’s rules. A month’s notice of a motion to make this 
alteration has been given, and it now remains for the members 
present to consider its expediency, and to adopt or reject it. 
Although the Council are not adverse to this alteration, they 
think that they ought to inform the members that there is 
probably no Society in England, dependent in part upon money 
payments from strangers for admission, which grants such ex¬ 
tensive privileges in this respect as the Yorkshire Philosophical 
Society. 
Admission Fees .—Another alteration which has been sug¬ 
gested, but which cannot be adopted at the present meeting, as 
no notice has been given, has reference to the fee of £3, in 
addition to the annual subscription, which has been always 
paid by members on election. The Council are of opinion that 
this fee cannot be abolished or diminished without detriment 
to the finances of the Society, and injustice to those who have 
already paid it. But it is thought that it might be advan¬ 
tageously spread over three years, if the elected member pre¬ 
ferred it, so that instead of paying £5 the first year and £2 a 
year afterwards, he would pay £3 annually for three years, and 
afterwards £2 annually. 
Appointment of a paid Assistant Secretary .—The resignation 
of the late Secretary, T. H. Travis, Esq., to whose laborious 
attention to its interests the Society is much indebted, left the 
Council in a position of great difficulty. No gentleman possess¬ 
ing at once sufficient leisure and proper qualifications for the 
office of Secretary has been found willing to undertake it. The 
duties of that office have, since Mr. Travis’s resignation, been 
performed by two gentlemen who avowed their conviction that 
their engagements were such that they could not possibly 
bestow upon the Society that time and attention which its 
affairs demanded, and therefore only consented to act as pro¬ 
visional Secretaries. 
In consequence of this state of affairs, a strong feeling has 
