542 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



catalogue of the cabinet of petrifactions collected 

 by John Kentman ; many catalogues of the same 

 kind appeared in the seventeenth century 6 . Lhwyd's 

 Lythophylacii Britannici Iconographia, published 

 at Oxford in 1669, and exhibiting a very ample 

 catalogue of English fossils contained in the Ashmo- 

 lean Museum, may be noticed as one of these. 



One of the most remarkable occurrences in 

 the progress of descriptive geology in England, was 

 the formation of a geological museum by William 

 Woodward as early as 1695. This collection, 

 formed with great labour, systematically arranged, 

 and carefully catalogued, he bequeathed to the 

 University of Cambridge ; founding and endowing 

 at the same time a professorship of the study of 

 geology. The Woodwardian Museum still subsists, 

 a monument of the sagacity with which its author 

 so early saw the importance of such a collection. 



Collections and descriptions of fossils, including 

 in the term specimens of minerals of all kinds, as 

 well as organic remains, were frequently made, and 

 especially in places where mining was cultivated ; 

 but under such circumstances, they scarcely tended 

 at all to that general and complete knowledge 

 of the earth of which we are now tracing the 

 progress. 



In more modern times, collections may be said 

 to be the most important books of the geologist, 

 at least next to the strata themselves. The identi- 



6 Parkinson, Organic Remains, vol. i. p. 20. 



