STRATIGRAPHIC GEOLOGY. 



(By Cpiaeles S. Prosser.) 



The science of Stratigraphic Geology was foiinded b}- William 

 Smith, an English surveyor and civil engineer, who was born in 

 1769 in Oxfordshire, a county in which the rocks contain abnn- 

 dant fossils which as a boy he observed and collected. Later 

 as an assistant to a land surveyor he became intimately acquainted 

 with a considerable portion of sonthern England. For twenty-five 

 3^ears he continued his investigations in that country, making 

 colored geological maps, determining the stratigraphy and arrang- 

 ing a collection of fossils in the chronological order of the suc- 

 cession of the strata. In the course of this long investigation he 

 was able to trace certain strata across England, and he discovered 

 that each horizon cO'uld be identified by its characteristic fossils. 

 His famous geological map of England and Wales on which the 

 various divisions Avere represented by different colors was published 

 in 1815 and this was the first representation on a large scale of the 

 geological formations of any considerable part of Europe. .\c- 

 companying the map was an explanatory text of some fifty ]Dagesin 

 which the stratigraphic divisions received names adopted from 

 local ones in use where the rocks had been studied. In 1816 he 

 published what is usiialh'- considered his greatest work, entitled 

 "Strata identified by organized fossils, containing prints of the 

 most characteristic specimens in each stratum.*' Thus was strati- 

 graphic geology founded through the unceasing efforts of an in- 

 vestigator of his own country who, for a long time without even the 

 encouragement of other students of the subject still remained true 

 to his ideal. In considering his rank among other pioneers of the 

 science the eminent G-erman geologist, von Zittel has written tliat 

 "His greatness is based upon this wise restraint and the steady 

 adherence to his definite purpose; to these qualities, the modest, 

 self-sacrificing, and open-hearted student of nature owes his well- 

 deserved reputation as the 'Father of English Geology'.''^ 



In this connection it is specially im]3ortant to note the prom-- 

 inence of the study of fossils in the organization and development 

 of stratigraphic geology. 



Apparently one of the first geological reports relating to any 



* The following addross on SiratigrapMc Geology was prepared at 

 the request of Professors Edward Orton. .Fr.. and Herbert Osborn and read at 

 the meeting of the Ohio Academy of Science. December 2S, 1905. 



1 History of Geologj/ and Palaeontology to the end of the Xineteenth 

 Century. Ogilvie-Gordon translation, 1901, p. 112. 



