The Yorkshire Naturalists' Union is an association of amateur and professional naturalists covering a wide range of aspects of natural history. It is one of United Kingdom's oldest extant wildlife organisations and oldest natural history federation. Its Mycological Committee, founded in 1892, is the oldest permanent organisation dedicated to the study of fungi in Great Britain.
History The Yorkshire Naturalists' Union was founded in 1861 as the West Riding Consolidated Naturalists' Society. Initially a collaboration of five local natural history field clubs, additional clubs and societies from across Yorkshire continued to join. The association renamed itself the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union in 1876.
Activities The Yorkshire Naturalists' Union organises joint field trips, co-operates with the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other county-sized associations, and publishes a journal, The Naturalist. The journal was first published by the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union in August 1878.
Notable members William Sawney Bisat(1886–1973), geologist Frederick Orpen Bower (1855–1948), botanist Margaret E. Bradshaw (1926-), botanist and conservationist William Norwood Cheesman (1847–1925), mycologist Alfred Clarke (1848–1925), mycologist and photographer William Eagle Clarke (1853–1938), ornithologist William James Clarke (1871–1945), naturalist and folklorist Eva Crackles (1918-2007) Botanist and teacher Charles Crossland (1844–1916), mycologist and ecologist James William Davis (1846–1893), geologist John Farrah (1849–1907), botanist and meteorologist Percy H. Grimshaw (1869–1939), entomologist and zoogeographer Henry Bendelack Hewetson (1850–1899), ornithologist William Walsham How (1823–1897), botanist and Bishop of Wakefield Edmund William Mason (1890–1975), mycologist George Edward Massee (1845–1917), mycologist Seth Lister Mosley (1847–1829), ornithologist and museum curator James Needham (1849–1913), mycologist and ecologist Arthur Anselm Pearson (1874–1954), mycologist George Taylor Porritt (1848–1927), entomologist Lorna I. Scott (1895–1984), botanist Albert Seward (1863–1941), botanist and geologist. Professor of Botany, Cambridge University from 1906 to 1936 Henry Thomas Soppitt (1858–1899), mycologist James Varley (1817–1883), ornithologist and entomologist Harold Wager (1862–1929), mycologist Roy Watling (b. 1938), mycologist Thomas William Woodhead (1863–1940), plant ecologist
References
External links Media related to Yorkshire Naturalists' Union at Wikimedia Commons
Official webpage of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union