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XXVIII. — On the Geology of Norfolk as illustrating the Laws of 
the Distribution of Soils. By Joshua Trimmer, F.G.S. 
It is impossible to enter on an inquiry in which geology is con- 
nected with agriculture, without being reminded that we are 
indebted to the son of an Oxfordshire yeoman for those discoveries 
which laid the foundation of all our geological knowledge. It 
was William Smith who ascertained for the English strata down to 
the coal measures, that they have a regular and invariable order 
of succession and a general dip towards the east ; so that in tra- 
versing the island from east to west, we cross the edges of beds 
which emerge successively from beneath each other, and form 
bands of various sandstones, clays, and limestones, ranging from 
S.W. to N.E. He also ascertained the important fact that each 
group of strata is characterised by a peculiar group of organic 
remains, by which it may be identified under doubtful circum- 
stances : as, when the rocks above it and below it are concealed, 
or when the ordinary mineral characters have changed. He 
was also the first to point out the distinction between those 
regular strata, each of which must have been, in succession and 
for ages, the bed of the sea, inhabited by animals whose remains 
are deposited on the spots where they lived, and that loose co- 
vering of Sand, gravel, and clay, often containing large boulders 
derived from far distant rocks, which is so generally distributed 
over the surface, and which, long called diluvium, is now re- 
garded by a large and increasing number of geologists as having 
originated in ihe action of ice, partly terrestrial, but chiefly marine. 
These discoveries he prosecuted, under great difficulties, with the 
sturdy, indomitable spirit of an English yeoman. He completed 
his great work, the map of the strata of England and Wales, 
alone, almost unknown, through a great part of his career, with 
little assistance from private patronage, and no public support. 
To accomplish it, he exhausted his slender patrimony arid the 
profits of a successful professional career. He paid that penalty, 
as Professor Sedgwick has said, which many men of genius have 
paid before him : he suffered, in his peace and in his fortune, 
from having outstripped the men of his own time in the progress 
of discovery. It was from foreign philosophers that he received 
the first acknowledgment of his merits. At home, to compensate 
for the long neglect which he had experienced there, honours 
were lavished upon him in his old age ; geologists acknowledged 
him, with one consent, as the father of English geology; the 
Geological Society of London awarded to him the first medal, 
struck from the proceeds of a fund bequeathed to them by Dr. 
WoUaston for the encouragement of original discoveries ; the 
University of Dublin conferred on him the honorary degree of 
