206 GEOLOGY AS AN ECONOMIC SCIENCE 



by the fossil-organisms that they contained, over 

 wide areas ; and what was still more important, 

 could be identified and relegated to their proper 

 position in the sequence, even when met with in 

 isolated masses and in widely separated districts. 



Since the days of William Smith, and the founda- 

 tion of the Geological Society of London in 1807, 

 the rapid accumulation of fresh facts, their coordina- 

 tion and correct interpretation, have tended more 

 and more to lift the science from regions of un- 

 warranted speculation and to raise it to heights of 

 exactitude little dreamt of by its founders ; in fact 

 "no more interesting record of human endeavour 

 and achievement can be found than that presented 

 by the advance of geology" during the last hundred 

 years. 



In some countries the strata are so nearly 

 horizontal that one deposit occupies large areas; 

 and thus no variety is met with except in those 

 cases where some mountain-top permits of the 

 preservation of a higher layer, or some deep valley 

 is cut down into an underlying formation. Our 

 country, although neither particularly mountainous 

 nor deeply sculptured, stands alone in the great 

 variety of rock-types it contains, and in pre- 

 senting for study an almost unbroken series of 

 geological formations formations that by reason 

 of their inclination follow each other across the 

 country in rapid succession. It is this complexity 

 of geological deposits, and at the same time com- 



