146 
Professor W. C. Williamson mentions as the first appear- 
ance of Mr. Binney as a geologist, a paper read by him in 1835 
in conjunction with John Leigh, F.B.C.S., now Medical 
Officer of Health for Manchester. This paper was ‘On 
Fossils found in the Bed Marl at Newtown, in the valley 
of the Irk/ 
The earliest paper recorded seems to he in the Trans, of 
the Geol. Soc.,Vol. I., p. 35, entitled a ‘Sketch of the Geology 
of Manchester and its Vicinity/ It was the work of three 
years, and showed in a remarkable degree the energy of the 
author’s character. It was followed rapidly by others on 
the coalfields of Lancashire and Cheshire, on the marine 
shells of the Lancashire coalfields, and on the fossil fishes. 
The enquiries which were of most interest to him were 
the constitution of coal and the conditions under which it 
grew. Next to these subjects came the action of glaciers 
and icebergs in distributing clay and boulders over the two 
counties especially in which he took interest. 
A longer memoir will probably be read. At present we 
may indicate his chief discoveries by the following extract : 
“ Carboniferous Flora. Fart IV., 1875, pp. 98 and 99. 
General Observations on Sigillaria, Anabathra, Diploxy- 
lon, and Stigmaria. 
“Ever since the time when the fossil plants of the coal 
measures first attracted attention, Sigillaria has occupied a 
chief place in the minds of botanists, for it is to be met with 
in the strata near most seams of coal, in a more or less 
perfect state of preservation. The trunks of this genus are 
of two kinds, namely, those distinctly ribbed and furrowed 
with leaf-scars on the ribs at greater or less distances, and 
those with the leaf-scars contiguous, and covering the whole 
surface of the trunk, both having them in a spiral arrange- 
ment around the axis. Nearly one hundred species have 
been described by different authors, who have made 
