He assisted in 1838 in founding the Manchester Geological Society, of which he was then chosen one of the honorary secretaries; he was elected president in 1857, and again in 1865. He was also successively secretary and president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. Working especially at the Carboniferous and Permian rocks of the north of England, he studied also the Drift deposits of Lancashire, which resulted in him and Joseph Dalton Hooker finding the first coal balls, and made himself familiar with the geology of the area around Manchester.