WILLIAM SMITH : HIS MAPS AND MEMOIRS 
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length made its appearance in 1815, and was succeeded by various 
county maps on a larger scale, sections, etc. 
" D'Aubisson has liberally said of this great performance of an 
unassisted individual : — 
" ' That which the most distinguished mineralogists have accom- 
plished in a small part of Germany in half a century, one man alone 
(Mr. William Smith, mining engineer) has taken in hand and executed 
for the whole of England ; and his work, as beautiful in its results 
as it is amazing in its extent, has led to the conclusion that England 
is divided regularly into strata, that the order of their superposition 
is never inverted, and that they are exactly similar fossils which are 
found in all parts of the same stratum even at long distances away. 
" ' In paying to the work of Mr. Smith the tribute of admiration 
which is due to it, I may be permitted to hope that further observations 
may confirm its correctness, and already, on several points, tbe work 
of the English mineralogists has confirmed it.' " * 
" Nor is this praise in any respect too high ; to say indeed that the 
first Geological map of any country is likely to be free from material 
imperfections, is to maintain a position which everyone acquainted 
with the ordinary progress of science must feel to be untenable. This 
is an object only to be gained by a series of gradual approximations, and 
it is by no means a small tribute of commendation to say that Mr. Smith 
has commenced that series with a performance, in which the trifling 
errors of detail which it may exhibit, bear no proportion in importance 
to the great general views which it correctly lays down. If we cast 
a rapid glance over this and his other publications, beginning with his 
representations of the more recent strata, and descending the geological 
series, we shall at once see what he has achieved, and added to our 
previous information, and what he has left for others. The tertiary 
beds above the chalk he has represented only generally, their more 
accurate division having been reserved for the researches of Mr. Web- 
ster, &c. ; the chalk formation he has laid down with great precision, 
but its limits had, as we have seen, been before generally stated by many 
authorities : hence through the series of sands and oolites, down to the 
* This quotation, in the original, is given on the back of the title- 
page of Phillips's "Memoirs of William Smith." 
