The publication of this work immediately produced a general revolution in publick opinion respecting the fossil remains of the district, and excited great zeal for further discovery. There was, indeed, at this time, in Whitby, a strong desire after intellectual pursuits, not only amongst the learned, but amongst many whose circumstances in life were unfavourable to such pursuits. The cessation of a long and exhausting war, the energies aroused by that war, and the want of employment before the return of commercial prosperity, all had a tendency to intellectual pursuits, and, no doubt, contributed greatly to the establishment of Philosophical Institutions and Museums, which the great wealth and the national prosperity of the present era scarcely sustain.<br><br>Immediately after the publication of the History of Whitby, Young, with his companion, Mr. John Bird, an artist, and a man of a philosophical turn of mind, undertook a thorough investigation of all the strata of the Yorkshire coast, from the Humber to the Tees, and of their western outcrop towards the Vale of York and the Cleveland hills.