568 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



habits long prevented him. His knowledge was 

 orally communicated without reserve to many per- 

 sons; and thus gradually and insensibly became 

 part of the public stock. When this diffusion of 

 his views had gone o for some time, his friends 

 began to complain that the author of them was 

 deprived of his well-merited share of fame. His 

 delay in publication made it difficult to remedy this 

 wrong ; for soon after he published his Geological 

 Map of England, another appeared, founded upon 

 separate observations ; and though, perhaps, not 

 quite independent of his, yet in many respects 

 much more detailed and correct. Thus, though his 

 general ideas obtained universal currency, he did 

 not assume his due prominence as a geologist. In 

 1818, a generous attempt was made to direct a 

 proper degree of public gratitude to him, in an 

 article in the Edinburgh Review, the production of 

 Dr. Fitton, a distinguished English geologist. And 

 when the eminent philosopher, Wollaston, had be- 

 queathed to the Geological Society of London a 

 fund from which a gold medal was to be awarded 

 to geological services, the first of such medals was, 

 in 1831, "given to Mr. William Smith, in consi- 

 deration of his being a great original discoverer in 

 English geology ; and especially for his having been 

 the first in this country to discover and to teach 

 the identification of strata, and to determine their 

 succession by means of their imbedded fossils." 

 Cuvier's discoveries, on the other hand, both 



