WILLIAM SMITH. 255 



In these objects, which were ever closely associ- 

 ated in his own mind, he was successful ; the most 

 valuable portions of his discoveries soon became 

 public property, and he quickly acquired extensive 

 employment in the practical applications of these 

 discoveries to mineral surveying and draining of 

 land on a large scale. The extensive diffusion of 

 his fame and opinions, which now began, was 

 owing to no actual and authorized publication, but 

 to continual discussions and explorations with 

 several active friends, oral communications and ex- 

 hibitions of maps at agricultural meetings (then 

 frequent), and circulation of manuscript copies of 

 tabular expositions of the series of strata at that 

 time determined. 



His views at this epoch appear by the following 

 notice : — 



"During my five years' close confinement to 

 practical engineering on the Coal Canal, my much- 

 wished-for opportunity of collecting observations 

 enough from the ranges of the different strata to 

 make an accurate delineation of the stratification 

 throughout England were suspended. 



" I had seen enough by my tour of August, 1794, 

 to satisfy myself of the practicability of doing it, 

 and often wasted much time in poring over maps, 

 in contriving how the ranging edges and planes of 

 different strata could best be rendered intelligible : 

 models were thought of, and one small map was 

 cut along the edges of some of the strata with a 

 view of defining their extent, and of showing 



