In addition to his involvement in radical politics which saw him brought before the Privy Council following the attempted assassination of George III in September 1794, James Parkinson was fascinated by the study of geology and fossils. His three-volume Organic Remains of a Former World (1804-11) was the result of palaeontological research undertaken from 1798. Written in the form of letters, the work was aimed at a general readership and discussed the process of fossilisation. Parkinson believed that fossils were created as the result of a great flood, as part of a divine cycle of ‘forming, destroying and reforming the Earth’. He believed that all nature was in a constant process of transformation and such fossilisation events would occur regularly. The first volume focused on vegetable matter, the second on zoophytes and the third on fossilised animals. It was an important landmark in the study and understanding of the earth’s geology and in 1807 Parkinson became a founding member of the Geological Society.