56 Dr. Fitton's Notes on the History of English Geology. 



gruity is not apparent only?, — resulting, not from any want 

 of regularity in the arrangement of the lowest beds themselves, 

 but from the difficulty of detecting their relations, and our very 

 imperfect acquaintance with them ?. If the hypothesis be true, 

 which supposes all the stratified rocks to have been produced 

 by deposition, there is no obvious reason why the order should 

 be more constant and regular in one portion of the series 

 than in another : — and if (to advance still farther in theory) 

 the change in the character of the lower secondary rocks has 

 been produced by their proximity to the crystalline, and per- 

 haps at one time incandescent, masses beneath them, may 

 not distinctive characters still survive, if sought for by re- 

 searches sufficiently acute and persevering, to enable us to 

 detect those proofs of order in their deposition, — which must 

 have been obvious, or at least discernible, at the time when 

 they were deposited, and must have remained so, till their 

 characters were partially changed? 



This sketch of the progress of geology in England has now 

 been brought down to the period of Mr. Smith's publications ; 

 beyond which it was not the intention of the writer to extend it. 

 In the course of these remarks, conflicting claims may possibly 

 have been weighed with too much exactness, against obser- 

 vations not in the first instance derived from study, but sug- 

 gested by sagacity, or almost spontaneously arising from the 

 facts as they came into view. It may therefore be right to 

 repeat, that nothing has been stated here with any intention to 

 question the consciousness of originality, in those inquirers 

 whose observations we have shown to have been anticipated. 

 And after such a list of authorities as it has been our duty to 

 bring together, no better conclusion for this paper can be 

 adopted, than a passage from the eloquent and affecting 

 address delivered from the chair of the Geological Society, 

 in conferring upon Mr. Smith the first mark of public grati- 

 tude which it was in the power of that body to bestow. — 

 Mr. Sedgwick, while exercising upon that occasion, what he 

 justly calls the * high privilege ' of rewarding distinguished 

 merit, has thus adverted to the labours of preceding inquirers: 

 — ' The works of these authors were, however, entirely un- 

 ' known to Mr. Smith during his early life, and every step of 

 ' his progress was made without any assistance from them. But 



* I will go further, and affirm, that had they all been known 



* to him, they would take nothing from the substantial merit 



* of his discoveries. Fortunately placed in a country where all 

 ' our great secondary groups are brought near together, he 

 4 became acquainted in early life with many of their complex 



