Dr. Fitton's Notes on the History of English Geology. 4-3 



equal regularity may not be observed, with equal care; but 

 simply because the commercial value of the coal is great 

 enough to justify a large expenditure of capital in those ope- 

 rations of surveying and levelling, which are indispensable to 

 the perfection of geological maps and sections. Among the 

 documents connected with this early period of his inquiries, 

 is a section of strata sunk through for coal, at Pucklechurch 

 in Gloucestershire, in which a considerable depth of lias and 

 red-marl is represented nearly in a horizontal position reposing 

 directly upon coal-strata, which are highly inclined. The 

 drawing is very well executed, and could not fail to suggest 

 to Mr. Smith the important fact, that these two groups of 

 strata are, generally, unconformable in that part of England : 

 — but in this we have already seen that he was distinctly an- 

 ticipated by Mr. Strachey. 



Another document still preserved, of about this date, is a 

 part of a coloured section, from the chalk-downs near Salisbury, 

 to the coal-measures near Bristol. What remains of this draw- 

 ing goes down to the red marl, and gives in detail, with very 

 little room for correction even at the present day, the out- 

 crop of the several beds, as they appear along the main road 

 through Norton, Hinton, Broadfield, and Mitford. A single 

 transverse section of this kind on a well chosen line, it is ob- 

 vious, is sufficient to unveil the whole structure of any strati- 

 fied country. 



By his introduction to the Rev. Benjamin Richardson, of 

 Farleigh near Bath, in 1799, he acquired one of his most steady 

 and disinterested friends. When this gentleman, who had been 

 himself a zealous geological inquirer, first showed his col- 

 lection of fossils to Mr. Smith, the latter began immediately 

 to place them in the order of the strata, to the extreme asto- 

 nishment of the collector, at the new light thus suddenly 

 thrown upon a subject which he had long and successfully 

 studied in other points of view. By Mr. Richardson, Smith 

 was made known to Dr. Anderson, who, forcibly struck by 

 the novelty and importance of his discoveries, urged him 

 to prepare an account of them for publication in a periodical 

 work on Agriculture, and its kindred branches of know- 

 ledge, in which the latter was at that time engaged* ; and 

 with this request Smith made some preparations for comply- 

 ing. But the task of composition was new to him, and by no 

 means acceptable. If De Saussure (with all the advantages 



* " Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts, and Miscellaneous 

 * Literature: by James Anderson, LL.D." London 1799,&c 



G2 



