6 
REPORT OF 
science combined, will never want an adequate audience 
in this city. 
There has been no measure yet adopted in the administra¬ 
tion of the Society’s affairs, which is of greater consequence 
to the scientific character of the Institution, than the appoint¬ 
ment of a Keeper of the Museum. In this capacity Mr. 
Phillips has undertaken to give his attendance at the Society’s 
rooms, during nine months of the year, for three days in 
each week,* and, conjointly with the Curators, to take 
charge of the various departments of the Museum. All the 
sources of information which it is the object of a scientific 
Institution to supply, will thus be regularly open at fixed 
and stated times ; and a person will always be at hand pecu¬ 
liarly qualified, by the variety and accuracy of his know¬ 
ledge, to satisfy enquiry. When the Society’s Museum, 
which was resorted to, in the course of the last year, by 
several eminent foreigners, was visited by M. Adolphe 
Brongniart, Mr. Phillips was present, and showed him the 
peculiar vegetable impressions which occur in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Whitby. M. Brongniart immediately recognized 
them as belonging to the middle series of his three great 
geological divisions of fossil plants ; and was much gratified 
by the confirmation they afforded of his views respecting a 
district in Scania, where he had observed the same genera 
and species, and had inferred that the strata containing them 
belong to the oolitic formations. Among these impressions 
from Whitby, were some ill-defined specimens, in which 
M. Brongniart thought he could discover the seeds of a 
monocotyledonous plant. > Mr. Phillips has since searched 
* Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, from Ten o’clock a. m. to Four p, m. 
