358 Notices of Memoirs. 



to contractors and others, who came to undertake the work, what 

 the various parts of the canal would he dug thi'ough. But the great 

 similarity in the rocks of Oolite, on and near the end of the canal 

 towards Bath, required more than superficial observation to deter- 

 mine whether those hills were not composed of one, two, or even 

 three of those rocks, as by the distinctions of some parts seemed to 

 appear. These doubts were at length removed by more particular 

 attention to the site of the organised fossils which I had long col- 

 lected. This discovery of a mode of identifying the strata by the 

 organized fossils respectively imbedded therein, the sharpness of 

 those in their primitive sites, contrasted with the same fossils 

 rounded and water worn in gravel, led to the most important dis- 

 tinctions," p. 40. Phil. Mag. 1833. 



"The superintendence and execution of the canal I had before 

 surveyed confirmed the notions previously formed of the strata ; and 

 the canal excavations, and the new quarries opened, produced organ- 

 ized fossils for the identification of several strata which could not 

 otherwise have been distinguished" (p. 42). 



This seems to fix on the valley between Dunkerton and Dundas 

 as the place of Smith's discovery, Now as to its date. Sedgwick 

 speaks of his having succeeded as early as 1791 in identifying strata 

 by means of their fossils. In the minute book of the Canal Com- 

 mittee under date July, 1795, is an order to Bennett and Smith to 

 stake out the Dankerton portion of the canal. Advertisements in 

 the " Bath Chronicle" of the period state that the committee will be 

 ready to receive contracts after June 2nd, 1795. Smith remained 

 in the employ of the company till June 5 th, 1799. Assuming that 

 the excavations in the Oolites to which he alludes were made early 

 in the course of the work, his discovery cannot well be put earlier 

 than 1796. 



In 1791 he had perhaps noticed a difference between the fossils of 

 the Lias and those of the Coal strata. 



Everybody knows that it was in June, 1799, his first table of the 

 order of British strata was drawn up. There were four works 

 published in which the principles of " strata identified " were made 

 known before Smith published anything himself, as shown in this 

 table. 



His Oym Publications. Publications of Others. 



1799. MS. table of strata. 



1801. Prospectusofworkneverpublished. 



1806. 



1811. 



1811. 



1813. 



1815. Memoir to map. 



1816. " Strata identified." 



1817. Organized fossils. 



Mr. Mitchell traces the gradual spread of Smith's notions and the 

 modification of them held in more recent times, but this, though very 

 well in a popular lecture is too well known to need a place here. 

 We must also, for want of space, omit the interesting notice of the 



Farey. Phil. Mag., 1806, p. 44. 

 Farey. Derbyshire. 

 Parkinson. Geol. Soc, Tol. I., Trans. 

 Townsend's Moses. 



