PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
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great utility of this Society, and made him regret that he had been absent from 
the former meetings. 
In the evening, Lord Howard, on taking the chair, expressed his gratification 
to see so large an audience. He remarked, that we so constantly use Coal, that 
we seldom think of its original formation, or of the hand that formed it; and yet 
we could scarcely find in Nature a greater proof of the wisdom and goodness of 
the Creator than in the ample provision he had made in the bowels of the earth 
for our advantage. He had no doubt that the lecture of the learned professor 
would have the effect of causing them to think of Coal, its origin, and its uses, 
with much juster views than they had been accustomed to do. 
Professor Johnston then proceeded to deliver an elaborate and most interesting 
lecture on the origin of Coal. He first proved, by a variety of botanical and 
chemical arguments, that it is of vegetable origin; he then showed that it was 
formed by the decay of vegetable substances. In this branch of the inquiry, the 
professor explained minutely the composition of different kinds of Coals, and 
showed that the varieties are caused by the different stages of vegetable decay, to 
the continued progress of which operation, he attributed the generation of the 
fatal gases that occur in Coal-mines. The last branch of inquiry was, whether the 
masses of vegetable matter which form Coal had grown on the spot where they are 
deposited, or had been carried into hollows by inundations, and then settled in 
the masses in which they are found. The lecturer stated minutely the arguments 
alleged for and against each of these theories, and concluded that the balance of 
evidence was in favour of the theory that they had grown upon the spot. The 
lecturer concluded with a few observations on the vast masses of vegetable matter 
which had been laid up in store for the use of Man, and the proof which the 
subject afforded of infinite wisdom and beneficent design. 
The lecturer concluded a little before ten o’clock, when a vote of thanks to the 
learned professor was moved by Mr. Embleton, and seconded by Mr. Morton, 
who described the lecture as one of the most interesting and instructive discourses 
that he had ever heard or read on the subject. The table of chemical gradations 
from vegetable matter, through the different varieties of Lignite and Brown Coal, 
down to Cannel, and True-caking Coal, was both original and beautiful, and as 
clearly established the vegetable origin of Coal, by chemical reasoning, as it had 
previously been proved by geological arguments. 
After a vote of thanks to the Noble Chairman had been passed, the meeting 
separated. 
