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Mr. Binney urged the importance of persevering in the 
work of accumulating facts. Theories long entertained had 
disappeared with the advance of knowledge. Without deny- 
ing the existence of such evidences as had been brought 
forward by Mr. Hull, there were some which had been 
adduced by geologists which had subsequently been disproved. 
For instance, it had commonly been believed that the shells 
in the till were of an Arctic character, whereas those which 
he had examined in the till of Blackpool and other places, 
were identical in character with those common in the Irish 
Sea at the present time. 
Mr. Leigh exhibited a piece of fossil wood, taken from the 
clay near Rochdale-road, at a depth of twenty-three feet 
from the surface. Mr. Binney said such specimens were 
frequently found in Lincolnshire, and were called wire-thorn ; 
the present specimen seemed to be yew. 
A Paper was read by Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, F.R.A.S., 
“ On the Life and Writings of the late Henry Buckley.” 
At the commencement of the Paper, the Writer notices the 
fact that the geometers of the North of England have been 
distinguished for more than a century. Commencing with 
Jeremiah Ainsworth and ending with Henry Buckley, there are 
many names in the interval which deserve particular mention. 
These men were mostly self-taught, and studied mathematics 
as a recreation. Whether at the loom, or in the mine, they 
labored on until their abilities became known to the leading 
men of the day, and their example influenced even the 
students at our Universities. 
Mr. Buckley was one of these self-taught men, who, with 
some slight assistance from the late John Butterworth, raised 
himself from obscurity and became distinguished as an able 
cultivator of the Greek geometry. Towards tlie close of his 
life he was in correspondence with most of the able geometers 
