45O Appendix. 



to his wife and family, consisting of three sons as well as three 

 daughters. 



It was his strong desire to have the rooms of the Society 

 retained, but enlarged ; and he intended to assist in raising a fund 

 of five thousand pounds for this purpose, and also for obtaining 

 the services of a librarian and editor. The Society has certainly 

 suffered by his loss in this respect, but it has not the less suffered 

 by the absence of his face and the full sympathy and clear sense 

 which he introduced into so much of the work of the Society, 

 although we often thought that, liberal as he was in politics, 

 time had made him too conservative of some of our forms. 



Professor W. C. Williamson mentions as the first appearance 

 of Mr. Binney as a geologist, a paper read by him in 1835 in con- 

 junction with John Leigh, F.R.C.S. This paper was * On Fossils 

 found in the Red Marl at Newtown, in the valley of the Irk.' 



The earliest paper recorded seems to be in the Trans, of the 

 Geol. Soc. vol. i. p. 35, entitled a 'Sketch of the Geology of 

 Manchester and its Vicinity.' It was the work of three years, and 

 showed in a remarkable degree the energy of the author's character. 

 It was followed rapidly by others, on the coalfields of Lancashire 

 and Cheshire, on the marine shells of the Lancashire coalfields, and 

 on the fossil fishes. 



The inquiries which were of most interest to him were the 

 constitution of coal and the conditions under which it grew. 

 Next to these subjects came the action of glaciers and icebergs in 

 distributing clay and boulders over the two counties especially 

 in which he took interest. 



He calculates the Lancashire and Cheshire coalfield as 6,600 

 feet in thickness, commencing with the lowest millstone grit and 

 terminating with the red clays of Ardwick and Manchester. He 

 says, ' In all the floors which I have examined, which are eighty- 

 four in number, remains of Stigmaria ficoides have been found/ 

 Again, he says, ' Coal floors show no evidence of strong currents 

 of water necessary to drift forests of timber from neighbouring 

 lands, but have every appearance of a hardened mud brought by 

 sluggish water with scarcely any current.' 



Continuing to extract a few sentences from the paper on the 

 origin of coal, vol. viii. of the Society's Mem. New Series, we have 



