THE COUNCIL. 
9 
The Yorkshire Philosophical Society may hope to make its 
library the depository of such records. It counts among its mem¬ 
bers many who, residing in different parts of the county, might 
with little trouble collect and transmit to the Museum much cu¬ 
rious and valuable information respecting the past and present 
state of their neighbourhood, and thus accumulate a treasure of 
inestimable worth, in which topographers in time to come may 
find laid up for their use what they would otherwise be com¬ 
pelled to search for at the cost of much time and labour, and 
for which, perhaps, they might search in vain, when time, and 
accident, and innovation have made havoc of the existing mo¬ 
numents of antiquity, and the remembrance of that which is 
now familiar has been worn away. 1 ’ 
The Curator proposes that an extensive application shall be 
made to individuals, for accounts of their own immediate vi¬ 
cinity ; and for this purpose a list of minute and well-considered 
queries has been drawn up by that able topographer , 1 the his¬ 
torian of Hallamshire, and of the Deanery of Doncaster, who 
states that the “ value of the information which will be obtained, 
whenever these queries fall into the hands of a gentleman who is 
disposed to bestow on them the easy labour which the answers 
will require, would be highly appreciated by any one who had at¬ 
tempted to describe a considerable extent of country, and who 
must have found that it is often easier to collect accounts of what 
passed two or three centuries ago, than of the occurrences of the 
century preceding our own.” By employing these means, and by 
referring, where it may be practicable, to documentary evidence 
in order to verify the oral information obtained, it is hoped that 
materials may by degrees be collected for the history of that 
large portion of this county which remains yet undescribed, and 
also for the future continuation of the history of those districts 
which have been of late so amply and so satisfactorily illustrated. 
1 The Rev. Joseph Hunter, 
