546 



CHAPTER II. 

 FORMATION OF SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 



Sect. 1. Discovery of the Order and Stratification 

 of the Materials of the Earth. 



THAT the substances of which the earth is 

 framed are not 'scattered and mixed at random, 

 but possess identity and continuity to a considera- 

 ble extent, Lister was aware, when he proposed his 

 map. But there is, in his suggestions, nothing 

 relating to stratification ; nor any order of position, 

 still less of time, assigned to these materials. Wood- 

 ward, however, appears to have been fully aware 

 of the general law of stratification. On collecting 

 information from all parts, " the result was," he 

 says, " that in time I was abundantly assured that 

 the circumstances of these things in remoter coun- 

 tries were much the same with those of ours here : 

 that the stone, and other terrestrial matter, in France, 

 Flanders, Holland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, 

 and Sweden, was distinguished into strata or layers, 

 as it is in England ; that these strata were divided 

 by parallel fissures; that there were enclosed in 

 the stone and all the other denser kinds of 'terres- 

 trial matter, great numbers of the shells, and other 

 productions of tha sea, in the same manner as ii 



