27 



William Smith (1769-1839), " the father of English Geology," 

 had previously published a "Tabular View of the British Strata." 

 He appears to have arrived independently at essentially the 

 same view as Werner in regard to the relative position of strat- 

 ified rocks. He had determined that the order of succession 

 was constant, and that the different formations might be identi- 

 fied at distant points by the fossils they contained. In his 

 later works, " Strata identified by Organized Fossils," pub- 

 lished in 1816-20, and " Stratigraphical System of Organized 

 Fossils," 1817, he gave to the world results of many years of 

 careful investigations on the Secondary formations of England. 

 In the latter work, he speaks of the success of his method in 

 determining strata by their fossils, as follows : " My original 

 method of tracing the strata by the organized fossils imbedded 

 therein, is thus reduced to a science not difficult to learn. Ever 

 since the first written account of this discovery was circulated 

 in 1799, it has been closely investigated by my scientific 

 acquaintances in the vicinity of Bath, some of whom search the 

 quarries of different Strata in that district, with as much cer- 

 tainty of finding the characteristic Fossils of the respective 

 rocks, as if they were on the shelves of their cabinets." 



The systematic study of fossils now attracted attention in 

 England, also, and was prosecuted with considerable zeal, 

 although with less important results than in France. An ex- 

 tensive work on this siibject, by James Parkinson, entitled 

 " Organic Remains of a Former World," was begun in 1804, 

 and completed in three volumes in 1811. A second edition 

 appeared in 1833. This work was far in advance of previous 

 publications in England, and, being well illustrated, did much 

 to make the collection and study of fossils popular. The belief 

 in the geological effects of the Deluge had not yet lost its 

 power, although restricted now to the later deposits ; for Park- 

 inson in his later edition wrote as follows : " Why the earth 

 was at first so constituted that the deluge should be rendered 

 necessary — why the earth could not have been at first stored 

 with all those substances, and endued with all those properties 



