had not yet been discovered by William 

 Smith, who, born two years after MichelFs 

 transference to Thornhill, did not begin 

 to publish his epoch-making discovery 

 until the distinguished Rector had passed 

 away. That the Table given above should 

 be imperfect and in some particulars in- 

 accurate does not derogate from the 

 author's credit and originality. He un- 

 questionably established the succession of 

 the main subdivisions of the English 

 Mesozoic formations, and he did this by 

 laborious determinations of the order of 

 superposition and the identity or close 

 resemblance of mineral characters over a 

 wide region, without any help from pa- 

 laeontological evidence. 



Though students of the history of 

 geological discovery in England have 

 been acquainted with MichelTs work and 

 have sometimes expressed their high 

 sense of its value, there is reason to think 

 that the pioneer merit of his contributions 

 to geology has never yet been adequately 

 68 



