v William SmitJis Map of England 233 



undertake the risk of engraving and publishing this map. 

 The work was begun in January 1813, and was published 

 in August 181 5. 1 It was appropriately dedicated to Sir 

 Joseph Banks, President of the Eoyal Society, who had 

 encouraged and helped the author. 



William Smith's map has long since taken its place among 

 the great classics of geological cartography. It was the first 

 attempt to portray on such a scale not merely the distribu- 

 tion, but the stratigraphy of the formations of a whole 

 country. Well might D'Aubuisson say of it that " what 

 the most distinguished mineralogists during a period of half 

 a century had done for a little part of Germany, had been 

 undertaken and accomplished for the whole of England by 

 one man ; and his work, as fine in its results as it is 

 astonishing in its extent, demonstrates that England is 

 regularly divided into strata, the order of which is never 

 inverted, and that the same species of fossils are found in 

 the same stratum even at wide distances." 2 



But it is not so much as a cartographical achievement 

 that Smith's great map deserves our attention at present. 

 Its appearance marked a distinct epoch in stratigraphical 

 geology, for from that time some of what are now the 

 most familiar terms in geological nomenclature passed into 



1 "A Geological Map of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland ; ex- 

 hibiting the Collieries, Mines, and Canals, the Marshes and Fen Lands origin- 

 ally overflowed by the Sea ; and the Varieties of Soil, according to the Varia- 

 tions of the Substrata ; illustrated by the most descriptive Names of Places, 

 and of Local Districts; showing also the Rivers, Sites of Parks, and Principal 

 Seats of the Nobility and Gentry ; and the opposite Coast of France. By 

 William Smith, Mineral Surveyor." The map consists of fifteen sheets on 

 the scale of five miles to an inch, and measures 8 feet 9 inches in height 

 by 6 feet 2 inches in width. It was accompanied with a quarto memoir 

 or explanation of 50 pages. 



2 Traitt de Geocjiwsie (1819), tome ii. p. 253. 



