INTRODUCTION. 



AN laying before the Public the fruits of my own researches into the 

 Geology of the Eastern part of Yorkshire, I think myself called upon 

 to notice the light which has been already thrown upon the subject, by 

 the labours of those who have preceded me in this investigation. 



The first person in England who studied, and who taught others 

 to study, the structure of the earth upon the strict principles of the 

 inductive philosophy, was Mr. Smith. Having provided himself with 

 methods of identifying the strata by an attentive examination of all 

 the circumstances which distinguish the one from the other, and especially 

 by a comparative survey of their organic contents, he extended his 

 observations to districts far distant from that in which they were origin- 

 ally commenced, and fixed at length on a substantial basis, the im- 

 portant doctrine of general formations. 



It was in 1794, that Mr. Smith first saw the wolds and moorland 

 hills in the eastern part of Yorkshire ; and guided by the knowledge 

 which he had even then acquired, of the correspondence of contour 

 between different portions of the same strata, he decided at once, on a 

 distant view, that the wolds were composed of chalk, and that the moor- 

 lands belonged to the oolitic series of rocks. This opinion was fully 

 expressed in his manuscript Map of the Strata of England, for the 

 publication of which proposals were issued in 1800. 



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