Dr. Fitton's Notes on the Hisloiy of English Geology. 53 



sufficient to say, that no publication has given a greater im- 

 pulse to geological science; — bringing into view distinctly, 

 and for the first time, that great class of deposits which con- 

 nects the secondary strata with the products of still subsisting 

 operations, establishing on impregnable ground the import- 

 ance of zoological inquiries to the history of the earth, and 

 affording some of the most masterly examples of the investi- 

 gation of local details. The principles on which this memo- 

 rable work is framed, are precisely those to which Smith had 

 previously been conducted, and which there can be no ques- 

 tion he had made known extensively in England, so far back 

 as in 1799, — superposition of strata, identified by the fossils 

 which they contain : and to these principles it is plain the 

 French philosophers must have been led, by the independent 

 inquiries which had been long going on in France, and by 

 the better acquaintance of the French naturalists with Wer- 

 ner's doctrines as to the order of formations. After mention- 

 ing the steadiness in the order of the strata throughout the 

 tract which they describe, the authors have thus distinctly 

 announced the principle of which they availed themselves in 

 recognising them. — 



1 Cette Constance dans l'ordre de superposition des couches les plus 

 ' minces, et sur une etendue de 12 myriametres au moins, est, selon nous, 



* un des faits les plus remarquables que nous ayons constates dans la suite 



* de nos recherches. II doit en resulter pour les arts, et pour la geologie, 

 1 des consequences d'autant plus interessantes qu'elles sont plus sures. 



* Le moyen que nous avons employe pour reconnoitre au milieu d'un si 



* grand nombre de lits calcaires, un lit deja observe dans un canton tres 



* eloigne, est pris da la nature des fossiles renfermes dans chaque couche ; 

 1 ces fossiles sont toujours generalement les memes dans les couches cor- 

 1 respondantes, et presentent des differences despeces assez notables d'un 



* systeme des couches a un autre systeme. C'est un signe de reconnois- 

 ' sance qui jusqu'a present ne nous a pas trompe*.' 



It was not till the summer of 1815, — after an interval 

 during which the author had to struggle with many severe 

 difficulties and trials, that Smith's Geological Map of England 

 at last made its appearance, and was followed by the publi- 

 cation of the other productions enumerated at the commence- 

 ment of this paper. Of works now so long in the hands 

 of the public it is needless here to speak in detail ; but for 

 the purpose of illustrating the progress of the subject, within 

 the limits to which these pages are of necessity confined, a 

 reduced copy of the Geological Section from London to 

 Snowdonf has been inserted in the plate annexed to this pa- 



* Essai^c. — Annates du Museum, xi. pp. 307, 308. 

 f This Section, though not published till 1817, had been long before 

 prepared. 



