Dr. Fitton's Notes on the Hhtoi-y of English Geology. 271 



have been taken, embracing general principles of such im- 

 portance, does not appear to have been mentioned, or al- 

 luded to by any writer on geology, either in this country or 

 upon the Continent, during a subsequent period of more than 

 fifty years. This may, perhaps, be accounted for, in some 

 degree, by the title and immediate subject of the paper itself; 

 but it must be ascribed principally to the very languid state 

 of inquiry as to the structure of the earth, in England, for a 

 long time after its appearance*. 



[A still more interesting question is, — Whether by the 

 words '^Jbssil bodies," without a general knowledge of which 

 ' in a large tract of country,' Mr. Michell states, 'it is hardly 

 ' possible to trace the appearances he has been relating' — he 

 intended to signify the organized reinains included in the 

 strata : — For, if that were his meaning, there would really be 

 very little in the doctrines of modern geology, in which, as to 

 principle, he did not take the lead. This, however, does not 

 appear to have been the case. Mr. Sedgwick has very justly 

 stated f, that no part of the Woodwardian Collection, which 

 was for some years under Mr. Michell's immediate superin- 

 tendance is stratigraphically arranged ; and that, not only in 

 the works and catalogues of Woodward, but in the language of 

 other English naturalists of the last century, every mineral 

 substance was designated under the general term '■fossil-' 

 organic remains almost always distinguished by the name of 

 ' extraneous fossils, organic fossils,' &c. Nor is there any rea- 

 son to suppose, that Mr. Michell's arrangement of the British 

 strata was made public till the accidental discovery of the 

 slight document above mentioned, many years after Mr. Smith's 

 inquiries had begun ; indeed, at a period when his Map of 

 England was far advanced towards publication.] 



The next author of note is Whitehurst, whose7?i5'?«>3/ into 

 the Original State and Formation of the Earth was first pub- 

 lished in the year 1778, and reprinted, with considerable im- 

 provements, in 1786. A great part of this .book is infected 

 with that taste for cosmogony which had misled so many of 

 the author's predecessors; but if the reader be not repelled 

 by the formidable chapters ' Of the component parts of chaos 

 "whether homogeneous or heterogeneous^ and ' Of the period of 

 human life hefoie and after theFlood^ he will find some excel- 

 lent remarks upon organized fossils; and in the latter part 



• After the first publication of Dr. Fitton's article in the Edinburgh Re- 

 view, Mr. Michell's |)aper on Earthquakes was reprinted in full, in Fhil. 

 Mag. vol. lii. beginning at p. 186. — Eurr. 



t Address to the Geological Society, at the Anniversary, February 1831. 

 Proceedings, p. i.74 (or Phil. Mag. and Annals, N.S. vol. ix, p. 275. — Edit.) 



