98 
SECTIONS TO CONNECT THE LANCASHIRE 
which could be referred to at any time hereafter. 'Mr. S. D. Martin 
offered to undertake a portion of the section. Mr. Hartop did not 
think it desirable to prescribe any definite line of section for tlie Lan- 
cashire Society to adopt. Tlie Lancashire gentlemen should be at 
liberty to select their own line, and that without reference to what 
should be done on the Yorkshire side. If they selected a line which 
passed at right angles with their minerals, it was not essential that it 
should meet the Yorkshire one in the centre of the Penine Chain. 
There might be opportunities of uniting the two lines by particular 
observations, and if each could be so drawn as to give the gentlemen 
on each side of tlie ridge an opportunity of taking that direction 
which was best for their particular Coal-fields, it would be better than 
adopting one continuous line. 
A resolution was eventually agreed to on the proposition of Mr. 
Morton, seconded by Mr, Embleton, That the Council be empowered 
to proceed with the section from the eastern end of the tunnel of the 
Sheffield and Manchester Railway at Dunford Bridge, across the 
Yorkshire Coal-field, in conjunction with the Manchester Geological 
Society, in such manner as they shall consider most likely to attain 
the desired objects." 
In order to appreciate the value of the sections which the Society 
had thus resolved to undertake and which its members proceeded 
to map and determine, it is necessary to consider the position of geo- 
logical science, more especially as applied to mining industries, half 
a century ago. Exactly forty years before the date of the meeting 
at Leeds, the venerable William Smith published the first parts of 
his map of the Strata of England, which was not completed until the 
year 1815. During these years geologists were divided between the 
hostile tlieories of Hutton and Werner. The latter was Professor of 
Mineralogy at Freiburg in Germany, and the study of the rocks in 
his vicinity led him to propound a theory that all rocks were of 
aqueous origin ; that originally they were all dissolved in the ocean, 
and were precipitated and deposited in the order in which they now 
exist, so that formations exist universally over the surface of the 
globe. Dr. Hutton, of Edinburgh, on the other hand, arrived at 
independent and very different conclusions, he taught that the forces 
