228 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



Coal Canal. In the daily engrossing cares of these duties 

 it might seem that there could be little opportunity for 

 adding to his stores of geological knowledge, or working 

 out in more detail the principles of stratigraphy that he 

 had already reached. But in truth these six years were 

 among the most important in his whole career. The con- 

 stant and close observation which he was compelled to 

 give to the strata that had to be cut through in making 

 the canal, led him to give more special attention to the 

 organic remains in them. From boyhood he had gathered 

 fossils, but without connecting them definitely with the 

 succession of the rocks that contained them. He now 

 began to observe more carefully their distribution, and 

 came at last to perceive that, certainly among the 

 formations with which he had to deal, " each stratum 

 contained organized fossils peculiar to itself, and might, in 

 cases otherwise doubtful, be recognized and discriminated 

 from others like it, but in a different part of the series, by 

 examination of them." 1 



It was while engaged in the construction of this canal 

 that Smith began to arrange his observations for publica- 

 tion. He had a methodical habit of writing out his notes 

 and reflections, and dating them. But he had not the art 

 of condensing his material, and arranging it in literary 

 form. Nevertheless, he could not for a moment doubt that 

 the results which he had arrived at would be acknowledged 

 by the public to possess both scientific importance and 

 practical value. Much of his work was inserted upon 

 maps, wherein he traced the position and range of each 

 of the several groups of rock with which he had become 



1 Memoirs, p. 15. 



