IIO HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



In 1791 he observed the agreement of the red marl and the 

 Lias near Bath with the corresponding strata in Gloucester- 

 shire, and also their unconformable position upon the 

 Carboniferous formation. For twenty-five years William 

 Smith continued his investigations in all parts of England ; 

 he entered his observations in coloured geological maps, and 

 compiled them from time to time in the form of tables or as 

 explanatory notes to his maps. He also carried out a scheme 

 of arranging a collection of fossils according to the succession 

 of strata ; his own collection was acquired by the British 

 Museum, and is still exhibited there. After his long period 

 of field observations, William Smith came to the conclusion 

 that one and the same succession of strata stretched through 

 England from the south coast to the east, that each individual 

 horizon could be recognised by its particular fossils, that 

 certain forms reappear in the same beds in the different localities, 

 and that each fossil species belongs to a definite horizon of 

 rock. 



Like his famous contemporary Werner, William Smith also 

 had a disinclination for writing; on the other hand, he was 

 always willing to communicate the results of his investigations 

 orally. It is told of him how in the year 1799 he made the 

 acquaintance of the Rev. B. Richardson, in Farley, who owned 

 a large collection of fossils from the neighbourhood of Bath. 

 To Richardson's astonishment, Smith knew better than the 

 owner himself where the individual species had been found 

 and in which particular horizon of rock. 



Then a dinner was arranged, at which William Smith met 

 another enthusiastic fossil collector, Rev. W. Townsend, and 

 William Smith consented to dictate a table of the British strata 

 from the Carboniferous to the Cretaceous formation. The 

 table of strata was rapidly copied and distributed among 

 geologists. The original manuscript, written by Richardson 

 and dictated by Smith, is in the possession of the Geological 

 Society in London. In this first table of Smith's the successive 

 strata were indicated by numbers. 



But Smith was not content with the determination of a 

 chronological succession of strata; he traced their surface 

 outcrops, and thus built up the material for his maps and 

 sections. He laid before the Board of Agriculture a 

 series of memoranda and geological maps which were 

 published between 1794 and 1821 in the form of 



