251 
caught sight of in the neighbourhood of Bath, into that philoso- 
phical generalization which became the basis of his geological map 
of England. 
Before Mr. Smith had quitted his occupations in Somerset and 
his residence at Bath, he indicated on a coloured map the geologi- 
cal structure of that neighbourhood. This document, dated 1799, 
is in the museum of our Society. He had also arranged his col- 
lections of rocks and their organic remains in the order of succes- 
sion and continuity of the several strata; but neglecting to ap- 
propriate to himself the merit of these discoveries by immediate 
publication, he liberally imparted a knowledge of each, as it gra- 
dually arose, to his private friends, through whose oral communi- 
cations they obtained such general currency, that their real author 
was frequently lost sight of or unknown. I was myself indebted to 
Mr. Smith, though at that time a stranger to me, for my first know- 
ledge of the order of succession in the oolitic series. This I derived 
from information imparted to me by the late Rey. B. Richardson of 
Farley Castle, who had himself acquired it from Mr. Smith. A ta- 
bular view of the superposition of the English strata, written by Mr. 
Richardson, from the dictation of Smith in 1799, at the house of the 
Rey. Joseph Townsend, in Bath, and since also presented to this So- 
ciety, forms a documentary proof of the extent of his discoveries be- 
fore the conclusion of the last century. 
In 1817 he planned the beautiful museum of Scarborough, in 
which he employed his original and instructive method of repre- 
senting, by sloping shelves passing one beneath another, the inclined . 
position of the strata; each shelf bearing the fossils that are re- 
spectively characteristic of the stratum it is intended to represent. 
These works of William Smith undoubtedly place him in the 
position of an original discoverer, who was the first to establish, 
on an enlarged basis of evidence, the important facts of constancy 
in the order of superposition, and continuity in the horizontal ex- 
tension of the strata of this island; and to prove that each of these 
strata is characterized by organic remains peculiar to itself. But it 
must not be forgotten, that both in this country and on the conti- 
nent, other investigators, many of them no doubt unknown to him, 
were simultaneously collecting similar evidence in support of this 
great physical generalization. It only enhances the value and con- 
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