THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



17 



LIFE OF WILLIAM SMITH, 



THE FATHER OF ENGLISH GEOLOGV, 



Smith may be a homely name, hut William Smith, 

 of Sarsden, the Father of English Geology, the dis- 

 coverer of the laws of stratification, is a name of 

 which the yeomen of England may well be proud. 

 He came of a race of farmers who for two centuries 

 had owned and cultivated small tracts of land in the 

 counties of Oxford and Gloucester. .It would be 

 well for England if there were more of these culti- 

 vating proprietors. William Smith the younger, of 

 Sarsden, yeoman, eldest son and heir-apparent of 

 William Smith the elder, of Churchill, yeoman — so 

 the marriage settlement set forth — married, in 1730, 

 Lucy, daughter of Henry Raleigh, yeoman, of Fos- 

 cott, in Oxfordshire. In consideration of her mar- 

 riage portion of £100 her father-in-law settled on 

 the bride certain lands, arable, meadow, and pas- 

 ture, in Churchill-field, which when consolidated 

 under the inclosure amounted to about ten acres, 

 and were sold in 1 807 for nearly £700. 



William Smith, the subject of this memoir, was 

 born in 1760, the same year which gave birth to Cu- 

 vier, the great French comparative anatomist, and the 

 founder of the French School of Geology, In his 

 eighth year his father died, and on the second 

 marriage of his mother, the person to whom he 

 had principally to look for protection was the eldest 

 brother of his father, to part of whose property he 

 was heir. 



Born in an oolitic district, the fossils with which 

 it abounded very soon attracted his attention. Its 

 " pundibs, " " poundstones, " and " hog's-ear 

 oysters," which were the playthings of his child- 

 hood, became the study of his riper years, and 

 aflforded an instance, as was remarked by Professor 

 Sedgwick, how, with some minds, circumstances 

 apparently trivial determine the whole tenor of 

 after-life. 



These pursuits found little favour from his more 

 practical uncle, from whom he wrung with diffi- 

 culty, and by dint of much entreaty, sufficient 

 money to purchase a few books by which to com- 

 plete the rudiments of the education which he had 

 received at the village school, and to instruct the 

 self-improving student in the elements of geometry 

 and surveying. The interest which he took, how- 

 ever, in the draining and improvements of land 

 found more favour with his uncle the practical 

 farmer. He prosecuted his studies irregularly, and 

 without instruction or sympathy, but with such 

 ardour and success that at the age of eighteen he 



was taken into the office of Edward Webb, of Stow- 

 on-the-Wold, a self-instructed mathematician like 

 himself, but of a higher order, who was then en- 

 gaged in the survey of Churchill-field for inclosure. 



During his engagements with Webb, Smith was 

 in continual activity, employed on professional 

 labours, which caused him to ti averse and survey 

 the oolitic lands of Oxfordshire and Gloucester- 

 shire, and the lias clay and the red marls of War- 

 wickshire. He visited the Salperton Tunnel, on 

 the Thames and Severn Canal, and examined a 

 boring for coal at Platford, near the New Forest, 

 where some thin seams of lignite in the tertiary 

 strata had led to the belief of the existence 

 of regular deposits of coal. In those days 

 such trials for coal were excusable, when the 

 order of stratification was imknown ; but the want 

 of a general diffusion of geological knowledge 

 causes them still to be as numerous as ever, and 

 attended with as great a waste of money. The 

 sums squandered in such absurd trials by those 

 who denounce geology as all theory is incalculable. 

 While engaged in these labours, all the variations 

 of soil in the different districts which he traversed 

 were carefully observed, and recorded by him for 

 future use. 



In 1791, Webb transferred to Smith, on his own 

 account, the survey of an estate at Stowey, in Somer- 

 setshire. To this he walked, examining the rocks 

 in his way. Here, to his surprise, he found the 

 same red marl as that of Worcestershire, holding a 

 similar position with respect to the lias and the 

 superincumbent strata, and employed in the same 

 manner for the improvement of the land. While 

 engaged on this survey he was desired to examine 

 and report on some colleries belonging to the same 

 proprietor. His subterranean surveys of these pits, 

 together with some sections which he drew of the 

 strata, observed in sinking for the coal, convinced 

 him that there was some regularity in the succes- 

 sion. The colliers admitted it for the coal mea- 

 sures, but denied it for the red earth above the coal. 

 " On this point, however," said Smith in his notes, 

 " I began to think for myself." His ability and 

 assiduity, while engaged in this occupation, in- 

 duced the neighbouring gentry to interest them- 

 selves in advancing his professional interests. 



The profession of a land surveyor like Webb, in 

 whose office Smith had received his professional 

 education, combined much now confided to the 



