FORMATION OF THE SOCIETY : UNPUBLISHED RECORDS. 
7 
On the 25th December, Mr. Embleton sent a copy of the rules of 
the Society, in which the name is recorded as the Geological 
Society," to Prof Johnston, together with a description of a fossil fish 
spine from the roof of the 40 yards coal at the Middleton Colliery. 
Accompanying this letter was a request, that Prof. Johnston would 
allow his name to be enrolled as a Honorary Member of the Society. 
Prof. Johmton to Mr. Embleton. 
Durham, SUt Dec, 1837. 
My Dear Sir, 
I am obliged to you for the circular containing the rules of 
your Society, (Geological I find it is called), for the West Riding. It 
will give me great pleasure to be enrolled amongst its honorary mem- 
bers, by the side of my friends Phillips and Smith. ^ly impression 
derived from my conversation with ]\Ir. Hartop, was, that the objects 
of the Society were to be more extensive, as I think they might with 
advantage have been, that it was to be a Polytechnic Society, em- 
bracing besides the strictly Geological, tlie practical waking, en- 
gineering, and economy of the mines and mining products, a wide 
field which embraces many important considerations, and which will 
be continually presenting new objects of interest to the community 
in general, while the researches of pure Geology in reference to a 
particular district have an obvious boundary and limit, towards 
which every year will be bringing the Society nearer. It was a 
general exposition of the important objects which such a Society 
might embrace that I contemplated in the lecture I requested you 
to offer to the committee in my name, of course, as the Society 
is to be purely Geological it would be presumption in me to pretend 
to direct the mode of their operation, when Phillips and Smith, who 
are far more able and better qualified than myself, and always on the 
spot, are members and co-founders with Mr. Wilson and others. 
You will not, therefore, I hope, think I am less deserving of doing 
everything I can to forward the viev»'s of the Society, if I request 
Mr, Wilson, through you, not to submit my offer to the committee 
in its present shape. I shall be happy when I come into that part of 
the country to give an address or paper on some other subject, but I 
shall write to Phillips explaining to him that he must do what I offered 
