260 KEY TO TERRESTRIAL HISTORY 



tricacies of stratiform arrangement he had found the 

 key to terrestrial history. The rest of his life was 

 devoted to making use of it. By its means he proceeded 

 to make clear the structure of our land, and conceived 

 the idea of representing the results in a geological map. 

 Alone and single-handed he determined to accomplish 

 in outline that which the organised efforts of H.M. 

 Geological Survey, extended over half a century, have 

 not yet completed in detail ; and he succeeded in his 

 task. 



The knowledge of geological structure which William 

 Smith acquired proved incidentally of great value to him 

 in his profession, and gave him unique advantages over 

 his contemporaries. His services were consequently in 

 great request, and he might easily have become fairly 

 prosperous ; but he spent what he earned, and the time 

 in which he might have been earning more, in travelling 

 about the country, mapping out the relations of the 

 strata, drawing geological sections, and collecting fossils. 

 So while Fortune smiled upon him and offered gifts, 

 Smith remained true to his idea ; and Fortune, who is 

 feigned to be a woman, did not forgive him. He died a 

 poor man as we count wealth but well content, for the 

 dream that he had dreamt in his youth had become, by 

 his labour and self-devotion, the reality of his later years. 

 In 1839, the year of his death, it was already an estab- 

 lished truth, and furnished inspiration to a great band 

 of followers, of whom it may now suffice to mention 

 Sedgwick, Buckland, and Murchison, the heroes of the 

 so-called " golden age" of geology. 



Let us now proceed to give some further account of 

 the great discovery which, as we have indicated, was a 

 means of identification. At first such a means was 

 sought in the nature of the sediment of which a stratum 

 or group of strata consists ; this had already been made 



