SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 511 



CHAPTER II. 

 FORMATION OF SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGT. 



Sect. 1. Discovery of the Order and Stratification of the Material* 



of the Earth. 



rTlHAT the substances of which the earth is framed are not scattered 

 J- and mixed at random, but possess identity and continuity to a 

 considerable extent, Lister was aware, when he proposed his map. But 

 there is, in his suggestions, nothing relating to stratification ; nor any 

 order of position, still less of time, assigned to these materials. Wood- 

 ward, however, appears to have been fully aware of the general law. of 

 stratification. On collecting information from all parts, " the result 

 was," he says, " that in time I was abundantly assured that the circum- 

 stances of these things in remoter countries were much the same with 

 those of ours here : that the stone, and other terrestrial matter in 

 France, Flanders, Holland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and 

 Sweden, was distinguished into strata or layers, as it is in England ; 

 that these strata were divided by parallel fissures; that there were 

 enclosed in the stone and all the other denser kinds of terrestrial 

 matter, great numbers of the shells, and other productions of the 

 sea, in the same manner as in that of this island." ' So remarka- 

 ble a truth, thus collected from a copious collection of particulars 

 by a patient induction, was an important step in the science. 



These general facts now began to be commonly recognized, and fol- 

 lowed into detail. Stukely the antiquary" (1724), remarked an im- 

 portant feature in the strata of England, that their escarpments, or 

 steepest sides, are turned towards the west and north-west ; and Stra- 

 chey 8 (1*719), gave a stratigraphical description of certain coal-mines 

 near Bath. 4 Mich ell, appointed Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge 



1 Natural History of the Earth, 1723. 

 5 Itinerarium Curiosum, 1724. 



3 Phil. Trans. 1719, and Observations on Strata, &c. 1729. 



4 Fitton Annals of Philosophy, N. S. vol. i. and ii. (1832, '3), p. 157. 



