68 
PROCEEDINGS 1839—1840. 
as I know who is to be the chairman. Will the circulars be wanted 
or will the Literary and Philosophical Society furnish their own ? Be 
good enough to let me know this as soon as possible. Let it be con- 
sidered that Mr. Teale takes the first paper in the morning, on 
account of his diagrams, &c. 
At the meeting, held at Leeds on December 6th, 1839, the vicar, 
the Rev. W. F. Hook, D.D., occupied the chair, and opened the 
proceedings by making the observations following : — Gentlemen, 
having been requested by your committee to preside at the West 
Riding Geological Society, I have done myself the honour of acceding 
to the request, though I must, without any affectation, repeat to you 
what I said to them, that I am conscious of my inability to discharge 
the duties of the office with credit to myself or with satisfaction to 
you, since my acquaintance with geology is merely such as might be 
expected from any person acquainted with the literature of his 
country, and I speak in the presence of gentlemen who have sounded 
the depths and shoals of the science. But thus much I may be 
permitted to say, that it is a science sublime as well as interesting 
and important ; interesting it is to have the mind carried back to the 
revolutions of those distant eras when the seeds were sown, if I 
may so say, of those fields of coal, of which we are reaping the harvest, 
which ministers a supply to so many human wants, and to which 
we especially owe the prosperity of the district of which we are the 
inhabitants. Of its importance I need not speak to practical men, 
it is at once admitted by the miner, the chemist, the agriculturist, 
the builder, and the engineer. Sublime it is, for what can be more 
sublime to the dwellers upon earth than the archaeology of the globe. 
Gentlemen, you are aware that scarcely half-a-century has elapsed 
since geology began to be studied scientifically ; and owing to the 
crude and conflicting theories of these geologists, who ventured to 
theorize before they had collected facts or collated the observations of 
practical men, some prejudice for a time was excited against it, but 
that prejudice is passing away, and the object with geologists seems 
to be merely to collect phenomena, to classify and compare them. 
I believe that I have now the pleasure of addressing gentlemen who 
aspire to no higher honour than that of being collectors and collators 
