Dr. Fitton's Notes on the Hi story of English Geology. 41 



' Mr. Elkington's unsuccessful experiments, and the further 

 ' converting much of it into excel Jent water meadow, would 



* have insured me the Duke of Bedford's patronage. But here 



* my hopes of remuneration vanished with the public loss of 

 ' that great man. 



H Business of all sorts connected with the stratification of the 

 6 country pressed upon me ; and some of my friends thought 

 ' the retaining of such information would insure me more 

 ' advantages in my profession than I should derive from the 



* publication thereof; and the late Duke of Bedford himself, in 

 ' a long interview with him on the subject but a fortnight be- 

 ' fore his death, said, " the publication would be better deferred 

 " a few years, as I should have the more opportunity of per- 

 " fecting my system, and the public mind would be better pre- 

 " pared to receive it." Mr. Farey was then the Duke's agent, 

 6 and was anxious to become acquainted with the subject of 



* strata; which, at the Woburn, Holkham, Smithfleld, and 

 6 Bath agricultural meetings, I scrupled not to explain very 

 ' freely; and to elucidate by general and local maps of the 

 ' stratification. Mr. Farey, and his friend Mr. Bevan of Leigh- 

 6 ton-Beaudesert, who immediately after became an engineer, 

 ' had very extensive practical lessons, at the Duke's request, 



* as I was informed, in the vicinity of Woburn, the Dunstable 

 ' chalk hills, and on other strata of the vale of Aylesbury, — 



* confirmed by a collection of the organized fossils by which 

 c all these strata are respectively identified. 



"Thus before 1803, I had fully taught, in the field, the 

 ' practice of tracing all the strata, and of identifying them by 

 ' the organized fossils, from the highest in the series over chalk 

 \ down to the coal." 



In another paper, which seems to have been intended for 

 publication, as part of a narrative of his earlier progress, after 

 alluding to his surveys during the years from 1787 to 1790, 

 Mr. Smith thus states more fully the result of his proceedings 

 at High Littleton. 



" But the discoveries of regularity in the strata, which 



I more particularly induced me to pursue the subject of geology 



* to such an extent, chiefly originated in 1790 and 1791, in sur- 

 4 veys of estates and collieries in Somersetshire, where I found 

 6 at High Littleton the same red earth sunk through for the 

 ' coal. The order of superposition in the coal-measures or 

 ' strata perforated at each pit in that neighbourhood, seemed 

 ' well known to some of the colliers ; and on drawing a sec- 

 ' tion thereof, with nine veins of coal, I was naturally led to ask, 

 " — Whether the superincumbent strata, rising into hills from 

 " 200 to 300 feet above the mouths of their coal-pits, were not 



Third Series. Vol. 2. No. 7. Jan. 1833. G 



