WITH THE YORKSHIRE COAL-FIELD. 
103 
Phillips, while Bone, Jamiesoii, Macculloch, and others had made 
known the rocks of large tracts of Scotland Greenoiigh, Biickland, 
Fitton, Horner, De la Beche, Johnston, Sedg"\vick, and others had been 
steadily working in England and Wales ; and Scrope had given to the 
world his researches on the extinct Volcanoes of Central France. 
But a vast deal remained to be accomplished. The field was still in 
a sense newly discovered, it stretched over a wide area, and lay open 
to anyone, who with active feet, good eyes, and shrewd head, chose 
to enter it, and the enthusiasm of those who were already at work 
within its borders sufficed not only to inspirit their own labours, but 
to attract and stimulate other fellow-workers from the outer world. 
The members of the society who undertook to prepare sections 
and map their respective districts, did so knowing the difficult and 
frequently perplexing nature of the ground. In the eastern part of 
the district they had the advantage of such detailed sections as had 
been preserved of borings and sinkings, and of some valuable but 
more or less indiscriminate information gathered from the practical 
working of the several coal seams. Westwards the courses of the 
streams, the larger valleys, and the gTitstone escarpments forming 
the brow of the hills succeeding each other in a regularly constituted 
series were all to be carefully measured, localized and mapped. 
Observations on dips, strikes and faults had to be made and recorded. 
Taken in the aggregate and remembering that the members of the 
Society who devoted themselves to this work were working from a 
pure desire to extend the boundaries of knowledge, animated by a 
noble enthusiasm for the new branch of science which they banded 
themselves together to prosecute, and that their only reward arose 
from the satisfaction of having prosecuted their investigations to a 
successful issue, and added some facts to the gradually accumulating 
mass of information respecting the structure of the earth's surface. 
When all these circumstances are considered, it must be granted that 
their work was calculated to be of great benefit to the community at 
large, and reflects the greatest credit on the energy of the young 
Society, and of those members especially who mainly prosecuted the 
the work. 
*Mem. of Sir R. MurchiBon, by Dr. A. Giekie, 1875. p 111. 
