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firms the accuracy, of Mr. Smith’s conclusions, that the results of 
other independent inquiries were found to be in perfect harmony 
with his own. It is known to all who are acquainted with the 
productions of the school of Freyberg, that Werner had pointed 
out the importance of petrifactions as affording a basis for the ar- 
rangement of geological formations, the same in principle, though 
confirmed by less extensive details, than those which Mr. Smith 
elicited from the oolitic series in England. Professor Jameson has 
expressly stated that Werner was aware that petrifactions are com- 
paratively rare in the transition rocks, increasing in number in the 
newer series.of that division, and becoming still more numerous 
in the Floetz formations: he had further remarked, that the animals 
of the earliest periods are of the lowest and most imperfect class, 
namely zoophytes; that in ascending through newer and newer 
formations, we meet with shells and fishes and marine plants, all 
different from any living animals and vegetables of the present 
earth ; that in the newest formations we find the remains of existing 
genera with those of land animals and land plants. 
Werner had also noted, in some detail, the order of succession of 
the strata of the Muschel-kalk of Germany, founding his divisions 
upon the changes he observed in the petrifactions it contains; and 
thus announcing the principle of making distinctions in strata 
upon the nature of their organic remains. 
The same principle had been previously caught sight of and par- 
tially elaborated by Lehman in Germany, and by other observers 
in France, where its application to tertiary strata received the fullest 
demonstration, in the great discoveries of Cuvier and Brongniart 
within the basin of Paris. In our just admiration of our country- 
man, therefore, we must not lose sight of the merits of his contem- 
porary labourers on the continent; and whilst we honour him as 
the father of English Geology, let us also pay just homage to those 
who had started before him in the same course, wherein it was his 
undisputed merit to have arrived first at the goal. 
Mr. W. Smith was born on the oolite formation at Churchill, in 
the county of Oxford, in 1769. When a child he was in the habit 
of collecting Terebratulz from the oolite rocks in the fields of his 
native village, which he used as substitutes for marbles. 
As an engineer he was employed in works of irrigation and drain- 
