COUNCIL FOR 1858 . 
11 
tion may be increased, it is not probable that it will occupy the 
whole of this room, and the galleries will aiford ample space 
for the augmentations of many future years. 
The Council wish to call the particular attention of the 
Members to a part of the report of Messrs. Woodward and 
Dallas, relative to the present stratigraphical collection. After 
mentioning the number of exhibited fossils, which amounts to 
8,181, and its richness in some departments, they notice its 
entire deficiency in others, as the Devonian corals and shells, 
the fossils of the Bath oolite of the South of England, of the 
fish palates of the carboniferous limestone and the lias bone 
bed ”; of shells from the magnesian limestone ; specimens 
from the rich quarries of inferior oolite in the South of England, 
and the Oxford clay of Chippenham; the fossils of the gault, 
and the greensand of Faringdon in the Isle of Wight. The 
Council draw attention to these desiderata, in the hope that the 
notice of them may induce the members of the Society to 
supply what is wanting. At the late Meeting of the British 
Association at Leeds, a plan was suggested for an annual 
assembling of delegates from the difierent Philosophical and 
Literary Societies of Yorkshire, at various places in succession, 
for the purpose of mutual communication and instruction. 
York was fixed upon as the most suitable place for a general 
meeting, at which the projected Union should be organized. 
The Council gladly offered the use of rooms in the Museum for 
such a Meeting, and ex.pect soon to receive notice of the time 
when it will be held. Should the suggestion of an annual 
Meeting be carried out, it will, among other advantages, enable 
the curators of difierent Societies to become acquainted with 
the natural history of the district in which the meeting is held, 
and with the contents of each other’s Museums; and by an 
interchange of specimens to supply the deficiencies of one from 
the superabundance of another. 
Of the £1000 which it was proposed to raise for building 
and fitting up the new room, £893 has been subscribed, and 
this sum will be exhausted by the expences already incurred. 
It is much to he desired that at least the amount originally 
contemplated sliould be raised : the fitting^up of the lower 
