as one of the great factors of power, Pennsylvania has reason to congratulate herself on the possession of a coal which is the nearest to perfection of any that is known, or likely to be known, being very nearly pure carbon, and spread over the very limited area of four hundred and seventy square miles, less than an average county containing the whole of it. Of this area about one-half lies in our immediate vicinity, but owing to the greater thickness of the beds of coal in our southern coal field, this one-half of the area contains six-tenths of the workable coal. Through this territory the coal lies distributed in sheets, varying in thickness from three feet, at which some red ash veins are profitably worked, up to that grand deposit in the Shenandoah Valley, twelve miles north of us, where the Mammoth vein reaches the thickness of one hundred feet. These sheets, by changes in the form of the earth's crust since. their deposition, have been more or less wrinkled, and are now found standing at all angles of inclination, in some places perfectly flat, and in others, as in the Sharp Mountains (which form the southern boundary of our town and of the coal region) tilted past the perpendicular, and leaning over into the valley, at depths varying from nothing, where they come to the surface, to the unknown depths just under our feet, where to reach them we should have to descend four thousand feet, nearly three quarters of a mile below the level of the sea. I will not weary you with enormous figures which represent quantities of which the imagination can take no hold, and will only say, for the comfort of those who know the value of anthracite, and hope it may last their time, that one of our competent observers estimates that at the present rate of consumption the supply should last 2600 years.

During the excursion which your committee propose that the Society shall make on Friday, you will, no doubt, get all the facts and figures which you can digest, and in them much of the information will enter the eye as well as the ear; it is more likely to be retained than it would be were I now to lay it before you.

He offered the following programme for the sessions:Wednesday, June 9.-The Society will meet in Union Hall, at 3 o'clock P. M., and adjourn at 6 P. M. Annual address, by WASHINGTON L. ATLEE, M.D., President of the Society, at 8 o'clock P.M. Reception at Dr. Halberstadt's at 9 P. M.

Thursday, June 10.-The Society will meet in Lyceum Hall at 8 A. M., and adjourn at 12 M. Also, at 2 P.M. and adjourn at 6 P. M. The annual dinner at Union Hall, 8 o'clock P. M.

Friday, June 11.-The Society will meet at 7 A. M., should there remain unfinished business. At 8 A. M. an excursion (through the courtesy of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company) by rail. On motion, the programme was adopted.

The Committee of Arrangements, acting as a Committee on Credentials, reported the following as duly accredited delegates and permanent members.