and their Relation to the modern System of Geology, 39 



the terraqueous arcana of nature, laugh at the poverty of our 

 ideas, and mock the futile efforts of man to reduce them to 

 system, or to effect anything approaching to a faithful delinea- 

 tion of so mighty, so mystical and magnificent a prototype. 



Notwithstanding this, there are certain individuals vs^ho, in 

 their anxiety to preserve inviolate adopted principles and pre- 

 conceived notions, treat with disdain or levity such actual cir- 

 cumstances as do not happen to accord with their prepos- 

 sessions, and thereby evince a disposition to give, rather than 

 to receive, the laws of nature. Certain geological discoveries 

 which I have recently made in this district, and of which a 

 short account is published in Taylor's London and Edin- 

 burgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, vol. iii. 

 p. 76. 112., 1833), have met with instances of this kind of re- 

 ception ; and on this account, as well as by the advice of some 

 eminent literati who liave examined the discoveries, I am in- 

 duced to solicit the farther attention of the unprejudiced 

 scientific to them and to their bearing on the existing system 

 of geology. 



This system originated in the labours of Mr. Wm. Smith, 

 an English surveyor, who in 1790 published his Tabular 

 Views of the British Strata ; in which he proposed a classi- 

 fication of the secondary formations in the west of England, 

 and contended that the order of different groups is never in- 

 verted, and that these groups may be identified at very dis- 

 tant points, by the presence within them of fossils of a deter- 

 minate structure, peculiar to each. According to the order of 

 superposition and marks of identification prescribed by Mr. 

 Smith (admitting the infallibility of the latter in the present 

 case), it appears, from the occurrence of the Gryphae^a in- 

 ciirva and Pentacrinites Briareus in the site of ray trial for 

 coal, that it is in the stratum which science denominates lias, 

 and is situated about five miles from the eastern edge or ex- 

 tremity of the red marl. The last-named stratum, according 

 to Mr. Smith's doctrine, reposes upon coal measures, and dips 

 under the lias clays ; consequently, if Mr. Smith's doctrine be 

 true, and we assume the undisturbed presence of the above 

 beds in this district, the lias and red marl formations must be 

 penetrated before the old coal formation can be reached. The 

 mean thickness of each of the two former strata is, according 

 to the calculation of some geologists, about 500 ft. ; the thick- 

 ness varying extremely in different districts, even down to six 

 or ten feet, and, in some cases, one or both of the beds are 

 entirely wanting. At the Glutton Ridge pits, the red marl 

 is, in some places, thirty fathoms deep, and in others but ten. 



I will not stop here to question the correctness of the theory 



D 4 



