GROWTH OF GEOLOGY. 233 



imitated. These and other experiments may be 

 justly regarded as the foundation of experimental 

 geology. 



William Smith. While the Neptunists and Plu- 

 tonists were bickering in Edinburgh which has 

 been a centre of geological activity through the cen- 

 tury the land-surveyor and engineer William 

 Smith (1769-1839), was walking through the coun- 

 ties of England, and working out his momentous 

 conclusion that the stratified rocks occur in defi- 

 nite sequence, and that each well-marked group 

 can be recognised and tracked by its characteristic 

 fossils! In 1815 he published his epoch-making Geo- 

 logical Map of England/ and this he followed up 

 during the' succeeding "nine ' years by twenty-one 

 county maps, ; in the execution of which he was 

 helped by his nephew and pupil, John Phillips. This 

 was the foundation of stratigraphical geology. 



In regard to the importance of William Smith's 

 work, the verdict of one of the foremost living geolo- 

 gists may be cited. " No single discovery," says Sir 

 Archibald Geikie, " has ever had a more momen- 

 tous and far-reaching influence on the progress of a 

 science than that law of organic succession which 

 Smith established. At first it served merely to de- 

 termine the order of the stratified rocks of England. 

 But it soon proved to possess a world-wide value, 

 for it was found to furnish the key to the structure 

 of the whole stratified Crust of the earth. It showed 

 that within that crust lie the chronicles of a long 

 history of plant and animal life upon this planet, 

 it supplied the means of arranging the materials 

 for this history in true chronological sequence, and 

 it thus opened out a magnificent vista through a vast 

 series of ages, each marked by its own distinctive 



