v Thomas Webster 239 



There is yet another name that deserves to be remem- 

 bered in any review of the early efforts to group the 

 Secondary formations that of Thomas Webster. As far 

 back as 1811, this clever artist and keen-eyed geologist 

 began a series of investigations of the coast-sections of the 

 Isle of Wight and of Dorset, and continued them for three 

 years. They were published in 1815, the same year that 

 saw Smith's map make its appearance. 1 They were thus 

 independent of that work. Webster had already studied 

 the Tertiary formations of the Isle of Wight and recog- 

 nized their alternations of fresh- water and marine strata, 2 

 as had been done in the Paris basin. He now threw into 

 tabular arrangement the whole succession of strata from 

 the upper fresh- water (oligocene) group through the Lower 

 Tertiary series to the Kimmeridge shale in the Jurassic 

 system. He clearly defined each of the leading sub- 

 divisions of the Cretaceous series, and prepared the way 

 for the admirable later and more detailed work of Fitton. 



Before passing from the cartographical achievements 

 of the earlier decades of this century, I must briefly allude 

 to the remarkable maps and descriptions of Scotland for 

 which geology is indebted to the genius and strenuous 

 labour of John Macculloch. His account of the structure 

 of the Western Isles, and the excellent maps and sections 

 which accompanied it, had a powerful influence in promoting 

 the progress of the study of igneous rocks, and have long 

 since taken their place as classics in geological literature. 

 The same indefatigable observer, after years of toil, prepared 

 a geological map of the whole of Scotland perhaps the 



1 See Englefield's Isle of Wight (1815), p. 117. 

 2 Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. ii. 



