226 Prof. Silliman’s Address bofore the 
and in some instances in galleries carried out beneath the bottom 
of the sea, where the chafing of the pebbles could be heard over 
the heads of the miners as they were pursuing their work. Al- 
though England was then without accessible means of scientific 
instruction in geology, and even mineralogy was far from making 
a considerable figure, many causes were in operation, to prepare 
the way for the signal development of scientific geology which 
soon after began to be made. Mining had been carried on for 
ages in Great Britain; her mines were numerous and deep, and 
very various in their productions, both in profitable and curious 
minerals ; in this natural school of mines, many mining engineers 
and practical geologists were forming in various parts of the 
kingdom.—Among these, William Smith* was laying the foun- 
dations of British scientific geology, by examining and com- 
paring, quietly and almost in solitude, the secondary strata of 
England, especially as to their organic remains, which he found 
to hold a constant connexion with their order of deposition; and 
to him, more than to any other man either in Britain or elsewhere, 
is due the honor of demonstrating that particular fossils are char- 
acteristic of particular strata—the types by which they may be 
recognized, in situations the most remote. Mr. Smith has been 
therefore justly called the father of English geology, and he lived 
see the splendor of its present bright meridian sun. His ge0- 
logical map and sections of England were founded upon his own 
laborious and long continued exertions, unaided by Pie public 
body or scientific association: 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
But private individuals were no longer compelled to labor alone. 
In 1807, that noble association, the Geological Society of Lon- 
don was founded, and organized in 1811, in which year its fi 
volume of ‘Transactions appeared. inunediately, voices of grat 
os * Mr. William Smith, of prc ab Blue was born in 1769 at Churchill 
‘on the oolite formation in the county of Oxford. His taste for geology was 
wat collecting terebratule from the’ oolitic rocks in the fields of his er’ 
: h he used as a substitute for marbles. He had often expresse ssed a 
he nee on which he was born and ippene and eS is 
oak elucidated. He died in Au on his 
iati ~rdsieve and was interred 
n the oolite ~Sscmtae te, Buclland’s Address, 1840 : “quoted in 
Bad 
Ve 
%, 
4 
ADL at 
