58 
FIRST REPORT— 1831. 
two of them indicating an individual of considerable size, the 
third smaller, and perhaps of a distinct species*. 
TUESDAY MORNING. 
This morning having been almost exclusively occupied in 
the business of forming the Association, the only communica¬ 
tion read was the following extract of a letter from Geo. Har¬ 
vey, Esq., F.R.S. L. & E. 
“It was my intention, had I been able to enjoy the privilege 
of attending at York, to have drawn the attention of the Meet¬ 
ing to the very remarkable circumstance of the Geometrical 
Analysis of the ancients having been cultivated with eminent 
success in the northern counties of England, and particularly 
in Lancashire. The proofs of this may be gathered from a 
variety of periodical works, devoted almost exclusively to this 
lofty and abstract pursuit. I have now before me several ex¬ 
quisitely beautiful specimens of the geometry of the Greeks, 
produced by men in what, for distinction sake, we call the infe¬ 
rior conditions of life. The phenomenon (for such it truly is) 
has long appeared to me a remarkable one, and deserving of 
an attentive consideration. Playfair, in one of his admirable 
papers in the Edinburgh Review, expressed a fear that the 
increasing taste for analytical science would at length drive the 
ancient geometry from its favoured retreat in the British Isles; 
but, at the time he made this desponding remark, the Profes¬ 
sor seemed not to be aware that there then existed a devoted 
band of men in the North, resolutely bound to the pure and 
ancient forms of geometry, who in the midst of the tumults of 
steam-engines, cultivated it with unyielding ardour, preserving 
the sacred fire under circumstances which would seem from 
their nature most calculated to extinguish it. In many modern 
Publications, and occasionally in the Senate-House Problems 
proposed to the Candidates for Honours at Cambridge, ques¬ 
tions are to be met with derived from this humble but honour¬ 
able source. 
“ The true cause of this remarkable phaenomenon I have not 
been able clearly to trace. A taste for pure geometry, some¬ 
thing like that for Entomology among the weavers of Spital- 
fields, may have been transmitted from father to son; but who 
was the distinguished individual first to create it, in the pecu¬ 
liar race of men here adverted to, seems not to be known. 
* Since the Meeting, Mr. Phillips has had the opportunity of observing an¬ 
other specimen of a different species of fossil fish, in the possession of C, Raw- 
son, Esq., from a still lower part of the coal strata at Halifax. 
