INTRODUCTION. IO9 



Thus, in addition to strictly empirical writings, there grew up 

 an independent speculative literature in which the names of 

 Whiston, Burner., and Woodward are prominent. 



Towards the end of the eighteenth century, in 1789, John 

 Williams, director of mines, published a Natural History of 

 the Mineral Kingdom, with a description of the coal-beds and 

 their occurrence in Great Britain, which was remarkably com- 

 plete. Williams was a violent opponent of Hutton, whom he 

 blamed for disbelief in the Deity. 



The hazy suggestions of Robert Hooke and others, that 

 fossils might perhaps be of use in identifying the chronological 

 order of the rocks, had remained unheeded for more than 

 a century. The greatest stratigraphers on the Continent, 

 Lehmann, Fiichsel, Arduino, had directed their attention far 

 more to the constitution of the rocks than to any benefit that 

 might be derived from a study of fossils. Giraud Soulavie 

 and Buffon had conceived some idea of the floras, but had not 

 ascertained any sure method of applying such variations to 

 problems of historical geology and stratigraphy. 



William Smith, 1 an English engineer, was the first to 

 recognise the importance of fossils in their full significance as 

 a means of determining the relative age of strata. Born in a 

 county that was unusually rich in fossil remains, he had in his 

 boyhood abundant opportunity of observing and collecting. 

 As assistant to a land-surveyor he became intimately acquainted 

 with the counties of Oxfordshire and Hampshire, and with the 

 surroundings of Salisbury and Bath. 



1 William Smith, born on the 23rd March 1769, at Churchill in Oxford- 

 shire, son of a farmer, received a scanty elementary education at the village 

 school ; managed, however, to train himself to some extent in geometrical 

 studies, and entered at the age of eighteen as an assistant in a land- 

 surveyor's office. He was afterwards employed as engineer in the con- 

 struction of a canal in Somersetshire, and practised independently as land- 

 surveyor and civil engineer. He lived in London from 1801 to 1819; in 

 1828 he became factor for the estates of Sir John Johnstone. After the 

 Geological Society was founded, William Smith was in 1831 the first 

 recipient of the Wollaston medal; in 1835 the University of Dublin made 

 him an honorary Doctor of Laws ; and in 1838 he was a member of the 

 commission for the building material of the Houses of Parliament. During 

 the later years of his life he was in poor circumstances ; a small pension 

 was granted to him by the Government, and he died unmarried at 

 Northampton in 1839. (Biography of William Smith in Sedgwick's 

 Presidential Address, Proc. Geol. Soc. London, 1831, p. 279; John Phillips, 

 Memoirs of William Smith , 1844.) 



