214 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 



surveyor and civil engineer. In this latter profession, from 

 1793 till 1799, he was engaged in executing the Somerset 

 coal-canal. On descending the Somersetshire coal-pits, every 

 inquiring person would receive from the workmen the account 

 of the regular sequence of the strata below the 'red ground' 

 given by Mr. Strachey in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' 

 for 1721 ; but Mr. Smith, guided by previous observations to- 

 ward a conclusion which perhaps was but dimly apparent to 

 himself, immediately demanded if the "strata were regular 

 above the red ground ? *? The answer was such as might be 

 expected from persons of merely local experience ; the work- 

 men declared that " there was nothing regular above the red 

 ground;" and Mr. Smith returned to the surface to .correct 

 this popular error. In the year 1791, he drew detailed sec- 

 tions of. the coal-measures pierced at High Littleton and 

 Timsbury, and represented the unconformity of the red mail 

 and lias above. 



Familiarized from childhood with some of the organic re- 

 mains of the oolite, and acquainted with the lias and red marl 

 below, Mr. Smith saw in Somersetshire these strata overly- 

 ing the coal-measures, and having made detailed sections of 

 the coal strata, and collected organic remains from these va- 

 rious deposits, he found himself in possession of new and wide 

 generalizations, which it became the enjoyment and the la- 

 bour of his life to unfold. 



" In the course of the two following years, while continu- 

 ing the duties of a surveyor and civil engineer, he became 

 gradually acquainted with all the minute facts of stratifica- 

 tion, in the country round Bath ; and for the purpose of bring- 

 ing to the test the inquiries suggested by his surveys in 1791, 

 he made two transverse sections along the lines of two paral- 

 lel valleys intersecting the oolitic group, (determining the ac- 

 tual elevation of these lines by levels referred to those of the 

 Somerset coal-canal) ; and ascertained that the several beds, 

 found in the high escarpments around Bath, were brought 

 down by an eastern dip, in regular succession, to the level of 

 his lines of section. During these two years Mr. Smith was 

 in the constant habit of making collections of fossils, with 

 strict indications of their localities ; and in completing the 

 details of his transverse sections, he found, where the beds 

 themselves were obscure, that he could, by organic remains 

 alone, determine the true order of succession. During this 

 period he also extended his surveys through the Cotteswold 

 hills, and became acquainted with the general facts of the 

 range of the oolitic escarpment towards the north of Eng- 



