Vol. VIIL] 
[Pakt III. 
PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
YOEKSHIRE 
GEOLOGICAL AND POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY. 
Edited by JAMES W. DAVIS, F.S.A., F.G.S., &c. 
1884. 
BIOGEAPHICAL NOTICES OF EMINENT GEOLOGISTS: IIL "JOHN 
WILLIAMSON." BY W. C. WILLIAMSON, LL.D., F.E.S., ETC., 
PROFESSOR OF BOTANY AT THE OWENS' COLLEGE, MAN- 
CHESTER. 
To form a right estimate of the work done by the subject of 
this memoir, we must recall to mind the state of Geological 
science at the time when he commenced his labour. The contest 
between the schools of Hutton and Werner, then at its height, 
referred chiefly to questions of Physical Geology. Palaeontology 
attracted but little attention, and as little was known of the 
relative ages and true succession of rocks. Yet early in the 
eighteenth century, Strachey had thrown light upon that suc- 
cession, so far as it was displayed in some of the strata above the 
coal in Somersetshire ; and Michell, then Woodwardian Professor 
of Geology in Cambridge, worked out the relative positions of some 
of the strata ranging from the Carboniferous beds of Western 
Yorkshire, to the Chalk of Cambridge ; but never having published 
these results in any definite form, Michell failed to obtain the credit 
to which his important researches entitled him.* 
William Smith was born during the lifetime of Michell, but 
derived no advantage from his investigations, being then wholly 
ignorant of the work done by the Cambridge Professor. Smith 
* Phillips' memoir of William Smith, LL.D., p. 139. 
