WILLIAM SMITH : HIS MAPS AKD MEMOIRS 
81 
" specials " as in the case of Smith s lecture. And it appears to have 
had good audiences. It was not perhaps without need that the Society 
took a dose of elementary geology from Smith, for at the presidential 
addresS; a fortnight later, Mr. John Marshall, the President of the 
Society, " read a paper, which he had promised, developing- a new 
theory of Geology. We can merely state " (says the bewildered 
reporter) " that the great principle of the theory is — the change of 
the axis of the earth's rotation, which, occasioning in the long suc- 
cession of ages an alternate rise and subsidence of the ocean in different 
parts of the globe has mainly contributed to form the varied stiatifi- 
cation of the earth's surface. Mr. Marshall approved, but not 
altogether, the Huttonian (sic) theory of the igneous origin of the 
earth's crust." (The reporter is apparently a little confused here 
between Hutton and Werner). The numerous facts discoveied by 
geologists as recorded in histcry, by which Mr. Marshall supported his 
theory, we are quite unable to allude to." 
In the First Report of the Literary and Philosophical Society of 
Kingston-upon-Hull (1824-5, page 9) we learn : " Mr. Smith, the well- 
known laborious author of the geological maps of England, Yorkshire, 
etc., and his nephew, Mr. J. PhilHps, being in this county in November, 
the council eagerly embraced the opportunity of engaging those gentle- 
men to dehver a course of nine lectures on the interesting study of 
geology, for the sum of £50, which were given at the Assembly Rooms, 
in the month of December, and illustrated by numerous drawings and 
specimens, in which the Society's Museum was again found to be 
exceedingly useful ; and it must be satisfactory to the members to 
learn that it was pronounced by those competent judges to contain a 
highly valuable collection of specimens. The cost to the Society of 
these lectures was only £12 9s., and they were accompanied by an 
accession to the list of members, fully counter-balancing that sum, so 
as, in point of fact, to have been enjoyed by the Society gratis." 
Later in the same Report* we j&nd that : "Mr. Smith having been 
induced by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society to resume his examina- 
tion of the strata of Yorkshire, the result has been a further development 
of the intricate geological arrangement of the eastern part of the county, 
and the identification of several distinct beds in the oolitic series, not 
* pp. 10-lL 
