Deceased Members — Dr. William Smith. 529 



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- 

 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 theTchanges 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 Terebratulae 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- 

 age in many parts of England ; as well as in stopping out the sea from 

 breaches through which it had invaded the marshes of Norfolk, 

 1806, 1807, &c, and in the draining off the water of Mismer lake 

 in Suffolk into the sea. He was the engineer also of the Ouse na- 

 vigation in Sussex. In 1809 he was engaged in the restoration of 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 17. Supplement, No. 113. Jan. 1841. 2 M 



