238 The Founders of Geology LECT. 



branched into theory or speculation, but occupied itself 

 wholly in the observation of facts. His range of geologi- 

 cal vision was as limited as his general acquirements. He 

 had reached early in life the conclusions on which his 

 fame rests, and he never advanced beyond them. His 

 whole life was dedicated to the task of extending his 

 stratigraphical principles to every part of England. But 

 this extension, though of the utmost importance to the 

 country in which he laboured, was only of secondary 

 value in the progress of science. 



Besides his great map of England, Smith published also 

 a series of geological maps, on a larger scale, of the 

 English counties, comprising in some instances much 

 detailed local information. He likewise issued a series of 

 striking horizontal sections (1819) across different parts of 

 England, in which the succession of the formations was 

 clearly depicted. These sections may be regarded as the 

 complement of his map, and as thus establishing for all time 

 the essential features of English stratigraphy, and the main 

 outlines of the sequence of the Secondary formations for 

 the rest of Europe. In another publication, Strata Identi- 

 fied ly Organized Fossils (1816), he gave a series of plates, 

 with excellent engraved figures of characteristic fossils 

 from the several formations. He adopted in this work the 

 odd conceit of having the plates printed on variously 

 coloured paper, to correspond with the prevalent tint of 

 the strata from which the fossils came. He had no palaeon- 

 tological knowledge, so that the thin quarto, never com- 

 pleted, is chiefly of interest as a record of the organisms 

 that he had found most useful in establishing the suc- 

 cession of the formations. 



