THOMAS WILLIAM E.MBLETOX. 
337 
than Professor Johnston, of Durham. His name had been added 
to those of Dr. William Smith and Professor John Phillips as 
Honorary Members. Professor Johnston held the view of the need 
of enlarging the scope of the Society so as to embrace whatever 
concerned the operations of mining, and he adopted the term 
Polytechnic to describe this branch of knowledge. 
By correspondence with Mr. Embleton and other friends in 
Yorkshire, Prof. Johnston was enabled to complete his materials 
for a lecture representing the existing conditions of the industry 
of Coal-mining. This was delivered at the second meeting of the 
Society, held at Wakefield, in June, 1838, being subsequently 
printed as a pamphlet and circulated amongst the Members. 
Mr. Embleton's letters to the lecturer are published, and are very 
interesting and suggestive on such points as the relations of the 
Middleton, Lofthouse, and Haigh Moor beds, aud on the varying 
behaviour of candle-flame in air charged with fire-damp. Mr. 
Embleton described to the Society the resinous mineral Middle- 
tonite, discovered at Middleton Colliery about 1831. He brought 
this substance under the notice of the British Association at its 
meeting in Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1838. 
At the meeting of the West Riding Geological Society, held 
March, 1839, Mr. Embleton read a paper on C! The Strata between 
the Bradford Rock and the Forty Yards Coal at Middleton," 
illustrated by a number of specimens of the rocks passed through 
in sinking a shaft from the surface to the first workable coal in 
the Middleton Colliery. Much importance was attached by the 
author to the careful observation and comparison of any fossils 
found in the roof of the coal. At the meeting held in May, 
Mr. Embleton and another Member were requested to confer with 
the Lancashire Society on the scales to be adopted for sections 
and plans. In June, he called the attention of a meeting at 
Sheffield to the need for a Geological Survey of the County on 
a large scale, moving the adoption of a petition to the House of 
Commons for a new Ordnance Survey of the Northern Counties 
on a scale of six inches to the mile. The petition was adopted. 
In December, the Society met in Leeds, under the presidency 
of the Vicar, the Rev. W. F. Hook, D.D., who had been invited 
