194 
WILLIAM SMITH : HIS MAPS AND MEMOIRS 
new red sandstone or red ground, the whole field is, with few and 
immaterial exceptions, entirely his own. Before his researches it would 
have been known only under the vague designation of a district of 
secondary shell limestones and sandstones, and to him we owe the 
attempt, in most instances successfully made, to ascertain by precise 
determinations the various and important members of this series, and 
to trace them from one extremity of the island to the other. In this 
enterprise (sufficiently arduous to try the powers and establish the repu- 
tation of any individual entering upon the ground hitherto untrodden) 
he may, perhaps, in some instances have safiered a few omissions to 
escape without detection, and more rarely have identified too hastily 
beds in distant parts of the country really belonging to different for- 
mations ; but still the great mass of his divisions remain unquestioned 
and unquestionable, and has been adopted, though with an occasional 
change of nomenclature, and have a few requisite corrections, by all 
the geologists who have followed his steps, as well as in the present 
work. The carboniferous districts are also on the whole represented 
with a near approach to correctness, but are far inferior in this point 
to those occupied by the series last mentioned, and here there was 
also extant a greater quantity of previous materials ; the districts 
of the old red sandstone, and those occupied by the transition and 
primitive rocks, are very inadequately represented. 
" Subsequently to the publication of Mr. Smith's map, in 1819 
another on nearly the same scale was published by Mr. Greenough ; 
the execution of this is more minute and delicate, and the details more 
exactly laboured; the general configuration of the surface of the country, 
its hills and vallies, are represented with far more precision than had 
previously been attempted in any general map of the island — points 
which did not enter into the construction of Mr. Smith's map ; and 
many of the imperfections of the former are removed." 
W. C. WILLIAMSON, 1896. 
In " Reminiscences of a Yorkshire NaturaHst," by the late W. C. 
Williamson (1896) one or two interesting references to Smith occur. 
Williamson says : " In 1824 my father* became personally acquainted 
with the great Father of Geology, William Smith, and with his subse- 
* John Williamson, the first Curator of the Scarborough Museum. 
