Progress of Geology. 243 



celebrated school we must not refuse the praise of having un- 

 dertaken the stratigraphical examination of Europe, in a spirit 

 of zeal, of acuteness, and of combination, worthy of the philoso- 

 phical character of the Germans, and of the vivid and compre- 

 hensive mind of the founder of the sect. And even yet we do 

 not possess, for the classification of primary rocks, those, namely, 

 which are not characterized by remains of organized beings, any 

 better means or rules than have proceeded from the Wernerian 

 investigators. Several of the divisions of the floetz or secondary 

 formations, as discriminated by Werner, have undoubtedly also 

 been retained by the most enlightened modern geologists. But 

 we conceive that this arrangement was undeniably constructed 

 at first without any clear or proper appreciation of that organic 

 evidence which alone can authorize its extensive application. 

 It is on this account that we attribute to the Wernerians, as 

 their really valuable distinction, the cultivation of mineralogical 

 or primary geology. 



England: Secondary Geology. — We turn from them to notice 

 secondary geology, a wide department of the science which be- 

 longs in a very considerable measure to England. The con- 

 viction suggested by an intimate acquaintance with an immense 

 variety, details that the strata of this country may be distin- 

 guished by the shells and other fossils which are found in them : 

 that by this means even minute subdivisions of beds may be 

 traced from one end of the kingdom to the other, and recog- 

 nised unerringly under almost any mode of occurrence. This 

 discovery, so important in itself and in its consequences, is due 

 to Mr Smith ; who, as a mineral surveyor, had his attention 

 early drawn to such views. We are informed, that Mr Smith 

 published his " Tabular View of the British Strata" in 1790, 

 and there proposed a classification of the secondary formations 

 of the west of England ; but the map of England, in which he 

 embodied the results of many patient and active years' labour, 

 did not appear till 1815 ; and, in the mean time, others had 

 caught (some probably from him) the same spirit of investiga- 

 tion, and were verifying the same conceptions. The Geological 

 Society of London, founded in 1807, was at the same time an 

 evidence of the existence of these views, and a means of apply- 

 ing them to the analysis of every part of our soil and shore. It 



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