8 
FORMATION OF THE SOCIETY : UNPUBLISHED RECORDS. 
under a wrong impression. I am at present casting about for the 
best means of getting up a Polytechnic Society in this district. 
I am unwilling to trouble Mr. Wilson with any separate reply to 
his circular, if you can communicate this present letter to him, I 
hope he will not consider niy not doing so to rise from any want of 
respect. I am obliged to you for your drawing of the supposed 
tooth, and am happy to find you are so much on the look out. It is 
not a tooth, but a dorsal spine, (ichthyodorulite as they used to be 
called), I think, but is the harbinger of much more you are yet 
destined to exhume. I find the stuff you scraped of the coal for me 
of no use, it is so mixed with coal, would you have the goodness to 
collect me some specimens of the substance on the coal, the thickest 
layers you can find, and if you have any opportunity, forward them 
either to Durham or to Newcastle, care of Hutton, or to Mr. 
Gascoigne's coal office, at the Selby Railway, to the care of Mr. 
Wharton of Durham, any time during the month of January. I hope 
however to hear of other discoveries before that time. 
With regards to Mrs. Embleton. 
Very truly yours, 
James F. W. Johnston. 
Mr. Embleton forwarded this letter to the Honorary Secretary, 
Mr. Thomas Wilson, suggesting that the Professor had mistaken the 
objects of the Society, because at the half-yearly meeting it was in- 
tended to unite Geology with Mechanics, as the objects of the 
Society, and suggesting that should Prof. Phillips be unable to 
lecture, that Mr. Wilson should endeavour to explain the matter to 
Prof. Johnston, so that he might still give his proposed lecture. 
The substance referred to in Prof. Johnston's letter was a resinous 
one which Mr. Embleton found in the Deep Coal at Middleton, and 
other Collieries, and which the Professor, after making analysis of it, 
named Middletonite, and described as new. 
Mr. Wilson to Mr. Embleton. 
Banks, near Barnsley, 
22nd Januarij, 1838. 
Dear Sir, 
I have written to Professor Johnston assuring him that the 
objects contemplated by our Society are still the same as we at first 
