Stratification of France and Ung!a?id, 1 15 



hirtenting the want of encouragement which suspended his 

 intended publication, f'oresawj that at no very distant pe- 

 riod, the free communications which he, myself", and others 

 had made, would produce other publications, by which the 

 credit oFhis discoveries might be lost, not only to himself, 

 but perhaps to our country. 



The haste with which the Memoir on the Environs of 

 Paris was drawn up, will be apparent to any one, who shall 

 sit down carefully to digest it, and follow the writers 

 through their details of the interesting geological facts which 

 it contains; in doing which, I found it absolutely necessary 

 to make other arrangements of the Places' names, and of the 

 extraneous Fossils, than those which the writers have pre- 

 sented, as well as to arrange the Strata described, in a Table, 

 to be seen at one view; and thinking that such may prove 

 interesting and perhaps useful to others of your readers, I 

 have transcribed them below, for insertion in your Maga- 

 zine, in case that you should think them sufficiently suited 

 to the new character which it has assumed. 



The difficulty of understanding and following M. Cuvier 

 and his able associate through their details, is greatly in- 

 creased by the want of a good descriptive Map, such as they 

 promise in their subsequent Memoir; this I have endea- 

 voured to obviate, as well as my very limited knowledge of 

 France and its maps would allow, by giving the bearings, 

 nearly, and direct distances in English miles, of such of 

 the places named as I could, reckoning from the island ia 

 the Seine in the centre of Paris. 



Geological students will find an alphabetical arrange- 

 ment of the places where observations have been made, 

 with the strata and fossils annexed ; and another alpha- 

 bet of ihe fossils, with reference to the places and strata^ 

 to which they belong, highly useful, as companions to the 

 sections and descriptions of the strata in their relative po- 

 sitions, and to coloured miner alogical maps, showing the 

 surface made by each soil*i a term which, in the Memoir, 



answer* 



* Mr. William Martin, in his useful work "Outline* of the Knowledge 

 »f extraneous Fossils," which should be in the hands of every geological 

 •tudent, defines this term, p, 155, and remarks at the bottom of page 158, 

 that we are " to consider the comparative uges of soils to be marked, in the 

 first initance rather l)y the nature than thequaniily of their organic contents," 

 which, though trr.e, is not sufficient to guard us from the Wernerian errors, 

 into wliich himself has been betrayed in this and some other sections of hi» 

 Viuk, in maintaining, that the absence of organic remains, marine remaini, 

 marine and vegetal, and wood and skeletons, denote the relative ages of thd 

 substances to which they belong : sirtce experience must teach every one, a> 

 it has in pact don^ our Paris mineral surveyors, that si'pcr-positian alone can 



H 2 iifttrurt 



