4 8 
The Existing Museum. 
One of the chief titles to distinction possessed by the 
existing Museum building is the fact that it was the birthplace, 
eighty years ago, of the British Association for the Advance¬ 
ment of Science. The Yorkshire Philosophical Society had then 
been in existence for some seven or eight years. It was founded 
in 1823, the motive power for its establishment having been 
found in the discovery of the celebrated Kirkdale Cave, near 
✓ ' 
Kirbymoorside, with its wealth of ossiferous remains. These 
fell into the hands of three York gentlemen—-Mr. Jas. 
Atkinson, Mr. William Salmond, F.G.S., and Mr. Anthony 
Thorpe—who, considering that such treasures, when dispersed 
in private cabinets, lose much of their value, concurred in a 
resolution to unite them in one collection as the basis of a 
Yorkshire Museum of Natural History and Antiquities. 
Thus the Yorkshire Philosophical Society came into existence. 
It may be mentioned that a scheme for a municipal museum 
had been proposed to the Corporation in 1743, by Mr. John 
Burton, M.D., F.S.A., who offered to the citv a valuable 
collection of Charters and other antiquities if a suitable 
repository should be found. The offer was declined and 
the collections lost. 
It was Wm. Vernon Ilarcourt, whom Dean Peacock 
styled “ the lawgiver and proper founder of the British 
Association,” to whom the citizens of York and man}' others 
are indebted not only for the establishment of the British 
Association, but for the foundation of the Yorkshire Philo¬ 
sophical Society. He was its first President. His exertions 
secured the land on which the Museum stands, and a large 
part of the gardens, which now form one of the chief 
ornaments of the heart of the city. What is now the Museum 
Gardens was in his time a waste piece of ground, called the 
Manor Shore. The ancient ruins of St. Mary’s Abbe}’ were 
defiled by the vicinity of pigsties and cowsheds, and told of 
desolation and neglect. It was on Mr. Ilarcourt’s application, 
supported by the influence of his father, the Archbishop, 
that the Crown made the original grant of the land to 
