ly Mr. John Farey. 443 



otherwise, of suggestions as to causes, which " itinerant 

 geologists ?■ may advance. This state of things ought not, 

 however, longer to continue, but the exertions of every 

 well-wisher to science ought to be redoubled, in tracing ou^ 

 and fully describing the facts which the British strata present ;. 

 were it only for securing to this country the honour of per- 

 fecting, and rendering the important discoveries of Mr. 

 William Smith relative to the strata and their alluvial ruins, 

 as subservient to science as they have already begun to be 

 to the mining and other ceconomical interests of our coun- 

 trymen, in different counties. 



Wonderful and important as the discoveries made about 

 ] 7 years ago have proved, as to the certain order and con- 

 tinuous planes- of the undisturbed strata, each of which, al- 

 most, entombing its own peculiar remains of organized 

 heings; and the more recent results, that all such are per- 

 fectly distinguishable from the present race of animals and 

 plants occupying the surface of ihe strata, as well those parts 

 of them which are now sub- aqueous, as the others: yet, 

 without the means of accurately distinguishing alluvial or 

 • moved matters, from the stratified sand and other substances, 

 which have hitherto been almost universally confounded with 

 them ; of discriminating between the extraneous and the 

 local alluvia of any district ; and further acquiring the 

 knowledge, that faults or fissures, slips, throws, or what- 

 ever else they may be denominated, are the mere fracture 

 and displacement of the piles of strata, and do not in any 

 instance affect the order or nature of the strata, (beyond their 

 immediate vicinity,) when an extent of the series is taken 

 into account, commensurate with the derangement that the 

 two parts of the separated pile of strata have sustained, and 

 the effect of a subsequent denudation or excavation of the 

 surface to its present diversified form of hills and valleys is 

 duly considered : without, I say, that- these latter facts and 

 their practical applications were also known and made, the 

 order and continuity of the strata might still have remained 

 as unproductive to geological science, or even to scientific 

 mining, as they havehitherto proved in the hand* of practical 

 collier* and ironstone miners, who have been fully aware of 



these 



