219 
from coal pits: these pits also are usually susceptible of more per- 
fect ventilation, than the metalliferous lodes in Cornwall. 
The attention of this Society is strenuously directed to the dis- 
covery of remedies for these tremendous evils, which affect no fewer 
than a population of 28,000 persons; that being the proportion of 
the inhabitants of Cornwall, who are occupied in working the mines. 
LOCAL MUSEUMS. 
Another circumstance which marks the progressive advance- 
ment of public feeling as to the value of geology, is the increasing 
disposition to form local museums in our provincial towns. 
At the meeting of the British Association, at BIRMINGHAM, in 
August last, after a strong expression of opinion, in the Section of 
Geology, as to the benefit likely to accrue to science from the esta- 
blishment of Provincial Museums, for the local productions of each 
neighbourhood, the justness of the suggestion was so fully recog- 
nised, that, in the adjacent town of Dudley, before five days had 
passed, a public museum had arisen from contributions, out of the ca- 
binets of private collectors in that town; presenting to the Asso- 
ciation a more perfect assemblage than was ever seen, of the exqui- 
site organic remains found in the limestone of that district, which 
has long been the classic type of a formation widely and abundantly 
distributed over the globe. 
About this time also a provincial museum was formed at Brap- 
FORD, in a district abounding in splendid examples of the vegetable 
remains which pervade the Yorkshire coal field; where the exten- 
sive collieries now wrought will furnish abundant materials for a 
collection, destined to illustrate the history of the extinct forms of 
vegetable life, which have produced the coal. 
The museum at Lreps, also, possesses a valuable collection of fossil 
vegetables from the coal field in its neighbourhood ; and the West 
Rrpine GEOLOGICAL Society, formed under the auspices of Earl 
Fitzwilliam, on the plan of holding quarterly meetings at different 
towns of the Riding in succession, is diffusing a taste for Geology, 
and affording ground for appreciating its practical importance, to 
numbers of intelligent persons, whose local occupations, and property 
in the coal and iron mines, will enable them to enlarge the fossil 
Flora and Fauna of our country. 
VOL. III. S 
