OF MR. WILLIAM SMITH. 215 



land." (Sedgwick, in 'Address to the Geological Society,' 

 1831). 



Early in 1794 he attended Parliament on behalf of the So- 

 merset coal-canal company; and in his journey from Bath to 

 London observed the successive escarpments of the oolitic 

 formations and chalk hills. To this hour he relates with a 

 peculiar delight, the history of a long journey to the north of 

 England, with Mr. Palmer and Mr. Perkins, in August, 1794, 

 undertaken for the purpose of collecting information on ca- 

 nals and collieries. Seated foremost in the chaise, he ex- 

 plored every point of broken ground on two lines between 

 Bath and Newcastle-on-Tyne ; and, instructed by previous 

 knowledge, he interpreted rightly the contours of distant hills, 

 and thus traced the strata of Bath to the coast of Whitby, 

 and the chalk of the Wiltshire downs to the wolds of Lin- 

 colnshire and Yorkshire. Perhaps no more remarkable proof 

 of the boldness and sagacity with which he followed out the 

 principles he had established, can be given, than the fact that 

 this reconnoissance of the north of England, corrected in de- 

 tail by a multitude of minute considerations, regarding drain- 

 age, sites of population, and other circumstances almost un- 

 noticed except by himself, enabled Mr. Smith, in the year 

 1800, to colour a small map, in which the geological struc- 

 ture of the North of England is rightly united to that of the 

 south, and the range of the oolitic series in particular is re- 

 presented, in some places very correctly, and in all with a 

 considerable approach to accuracy. 



At this period of his life Mr. Smith was utterly unacquaint- 

 ed with books treating of the natural history of the earth : he 

 had no other teacher than that acquired 'habit of observation' 

 which he has justly recommended to his followers. It is dif- 

 ficult in these days to conceive of such insulated and inde- 

 pendent research, as that into which the young philosopher 

 entered ; rumours at least of the progress of science now cir- 

 culate through the Cotteswold hills ; and it would be impos- 

 sible for the most reserved student to be wholly uninfluenced 

 by them. That Mr. Smith was so uninfluenced is a fact at- 

 tested by the very nomenclature which he created and esta- 

 blished in Geology. The 'combrash,' the 'forest marble,' the 

 ' lias,' &c, form a system of names almost barbarous to ears 

 polite, but so firmly rooted in English Geology, as to consti- 

 tute a most durable monument of the sagacity and originality 

 of their author. 



In 1795 Mr. Smith became a housekeeper, and immediately 

 began to arrange his collection of fossils from the vicinity of 

 Bath, in the order of the strata. His residence in the Cot- 



