8 
DAVIS : PEO. PHILLIPS. 
West Riding have been surveyed for several years and still there 
are only about one half the sheets of the map of this important 
area issued at the present moment. 
The vast work of Smith was readily appreciated by his brethren 
of the ham mer. In 1807 the Geological Society of London was formed 
and took a position, which it maintains still, of the foremost organi- 
zation in the world for the cultivation, recognition and dissemina- 
tion of geological knowledge. Amongst the founders and early 
membei'S of the Society were, Buckland, who investigated the 
Kirkdale Caves, in Yorkshire ; Adam Sedgwick, who was born at 
Dent, and a thorough Yorkshireman ; Yernon Harcourt — Charles 
Lyell, Phillips, Murchison, and many others whose names are 
revered as the pioneers in the science, though they have passed 
away. These savans, heartily recognizing the truth of the discover- 
ies of Smith, advanced them, not only in this country but quickly 
bore them over the continent of Europe and to Asia and America. 
Everywhere tJie same evidence was afforded that the rocks compos- 
ing the whole surface of the earth are the result of ever-acting 
causes, that the ordinary and common denuding agencies of rain, 
frost, and ice, gradually but incessantly grind down the surface of 
the earth, the disintegrated material being borne by rivers to the sea, 
there again to be deposited and in time raise up new lands. Such 
were the forces found to be now at work, and to be those on which a 
reasonable basis could be laid to explain long past accum ulations of 
stratified rocks. 
Fortunately, an account of Professor Phillips' early life 
written by his own hand, has been preserved in the " Athenaeum " 
newspaper for May 2nd, 1874. From it we learn that he was born 
on Christmas Day, 1800, at Marden, in Wiltshire. His father, 
the youngest son of a Welsh family settled for many generations 
on their own property at Blaen-y-ddol, in Carmarthenshire, was 
trained for the Church in which some of his relatives had place ; 
but this plan was not carried out. " He came to England, was 
appointed an officer of Excise, and married the sister of dear old 
