WILLIAM SMITH. 245 



ill cases otherwise doubtful, be recognized and 

 discriminated from others like it, but in a different 

 part of the series, by examination of them." In 

 other words, he discovered that strata are to be 

 recognized by their fossils. He now remarked also 

 the contrast between the rounded state and mixed 

 condition of the fossils which lay in gravel deposits 

 and the sharply preserved specimens lying in 

 natural associations in the strata, and thus acquired 

 a notion of the distinction between what were after- 

 wards named diluvial and stratified deposits. 



The possessor of all these generalizations, now 

 (1795) twenty-six years of age, was still shrouded 

 in the obscure village of High Littleton, but in 

 this year he removed to Bath, and took up his 

 abode in the central house of a short range of 

 buildings called the Cottage Crescent, which occu- 

 pied a picturesque and elevated site south of that 

 city. " From this point," says he, " the eye roved 

 anxiously over the interesting expanse which ex- 

 tended before me to the Sugar-loaf mountain in 

 Monmouthshire, and embraced all in the vicinities 

 of Bath and Bristol. Then did a thousand thoughts 

 occur to me, respecting the geology of that and 

 adjacent districts continually under my eye, which 

 have never been reduced to writing." He continued 

 to direct all the operations on the Somerset Coal 

 Canal, and very copious note-books attest the 

 constancy and exactitude of his attention to that 

 occupation. To this cause, indeed, may be ascribed 

 the extreme rarity of any essays, or even memo- 



