230 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



Such continuous travelling to and fro across the country 

 served to augment enormously his minute personal acquaint- 

 ance with the geological structure of England. He made 

 copious notes, and his retentive memory enabled him to 

 retain a vivid recollection even of the details of what he 

 had once seen. But the leisure which he needed in order 

 to put his materials together seemed to flee from him. 

 Year after year passed away ; the pile of manuscript rose 

 higher, but no progress was made in the preparation of 

 the growing mass of material for publication. 



In the year 1799, William Smith made the acquaint- 

 ance of the Eev. Benjamin Eichardson, who, living in 

 Bath, had interested himself in collecting fossils from 

 the rocks in the neighbourhood. Looking over this collec- 

 tion, the experienced surveyor was able to tell far more 

 about its contents than the owner of it knew himself. 

 Writing long afterwards to Sedgwick, Mr. Eichardson 

 narrated how Smith could decide at once from what strata 

 they had respectively come, and how well he knew the lie 

 of the rocks on the ground. "With the open liberality 

 peculiar to Mr. Smith," he adds, "he wished me to com- 

 municate this to the Eev. J. Townsend of Pewsey (then 

 in Bath), who was not less surprised at the discovery. 

 But we were soon much more astonished by proofs of his 

 own collecting, that whatever stratum was found in any 

 part of England, the same remains would be found in it 

 and no other. Mr. Townsend, who had pursued the subject 

 forty or fifty years, and had travelled over the greater part 

 of civilized Europe, declared it perfectly unknown to all 

 his acquaintance, and, he believed, to all the rest of the 

 world. In consequence of Mr. Smith's desire to make 



