312 Britain's Heritage of Science 



Much of the research falls within the sphere of Chemistry, 

 but it is to the microscope and its accessories that we owe 

 most of the advances made. 



Henry Clifton Sorby (1826-1908) may be regarded as the 

 pioneer along this line. He read a paper on the subject before 

 the Geological Society in 1857 describing the structure of 

 crystals as giving an indication of the origin of minerals and 

 rocks. These he studied by means of thin slices, a method 

 which he had previously, in 1850, applied to the study of 

 limestones. Sorby was followed by the Rev. Prof. Bonney, 

 an accomplished scholar and keen controversialist, who 

 grasped at once the value of these new instruments of 

 research, vindicated Sorby, and by his academic teaching 

 and writings brought the new methods into the prominent 

 and popular position which they now occupy. 



" La paleontologie suive les marteaux 5>1 was a phrase in 

 which it was sought at a recent International Geological 

 Congress 1 to point out that it generally happened that the 

 collections of fossils which have furnished the materials for 

 comparative study or for the discrimination of important 

 series of strata owed their existence to the accident that they 

 were obtainable round the home of some keen investigator 

 who, working single-handed or gathering round him a band of 

 like-minded friends, had availed himself of his special oppor- 

 tunities. In this way all available exposures in the district 

 were well searched ; the strata were called after the localities 

 where they were first or best seen, and genera and species were 

 named after some one whom it was desired to honour or 

 some character that appeared distinctive. In offering a 

 comparative sketch of the development of stratigraphical 

 research in Britain we may take the names of the pioneers 

 alphabetically, chronologically, or topographically, and the 

 above considerations will soon convince us that a bio- 

 graphical sketch of the founders leads us at once to a con- 

 sideration of the locality in which their discoveries were 

 made. We can hardly select a better example in illustration 

 of this than the district round St. David's. Here the oldest 

 rocks in the British Isles were seen, folded and contorted it 



1 Rept. International Geol. Congress, Petrograd, 



