FORMATION OF THE SOCIETY : r^PUBLISHED RECORDS. 1 1 
his duties are to be partially lightened by your kindness, for I under- 
stand it would be extremely inconvenient, and not accord with his 
present engagements, to leave London so early as March. If these 
arguments, poor as they may be, induce you to execute your first 
promise, I shall feel gratified by hearing that you will be amongst us 
next month. In the meantime I should be glad to have a few hints 
for the arrangement of our affairs previously to the meeting, and 
that for this purpose you would communicate either with Mr. "Wilson 
or myself. I have forwarded to you some more specimens of the 
resinous substances on our coal, the layers are the thickest we could 
procure. I hear that at Hebburn Colliery they occasionally find the 
same substance in their layers, if I can get any specimens while I 
am here I will send some. We have no fresh discoveries in our ''fish 
bed" of any consequence, beyond a fragment of a jaw with four or five 
teeth of the same kind, but considerably smaller than those you have, 
a small cusped tooth as on the margin, and a fragment which I take 
for a small vertebrse. ^yould you tell me which work you consider 
the best to enable one to study these remains, that by M. Agassiz 
I believe is unfinished. I am sorry I have not had an opportunity of 
calling upon you while I have been at Newcastle. 
I am, kc, 
Thos. W. Embletox. 
This letter seems to have had the desired effect, and Prof. 
Johnston decided to prepare his lecture. 
The first general meeting of the members was held at "Wakefield 
on March 1st, 1838, to which the geological section of the Leeds 
Philosophical and Literary Society was invited through Mr. W. West. 
About one hundred persons were present. The President, Earl 
Fitzwilliam, was unable to be present, and the chair was occupied by 
Mr. C. J. Brandling, of Middleton. Mr. Embleton has furnished from 
his note book the following account of the meeting. Several general 
resolutions were passed. Mr. Hartop read a paper on the Geology of 
the Don in reference to a 'heave,' as he termed it, in the coal 
measures, but the nature of which did not appear. The Rev. Wm. 
Thorp read a notice of the Yorkshire Coal-field generally ; it con- 
tained many details which must have cost him much time to coUect 
