198 
WILLIAM SMITH : HIS MAPS AND MEMOIRS 
" This sketch of the progress of geology in England has now been 
brought down to the period of Mr. Smith's publications ; beyond which 
it was not the intention of the writer to extend it. In the course of 
these remarks, conflicting claims may possibly have been weighed with 
too much exactness, against observations not in the first instance 
derived from study, but suggested by sagacity, or almost spontaneously 
arising from the facts as they came into view. It may, therefore be 
right to repeat, that nothing has been stated here with any intention to 
question the consciousness of originality, in those inquirers whose 
observations we have shown to have been anticipated. No better 
conclusion for this paper can be adopted, than a passage from the elo- 
quent and effecting address delivered from the chair of the Geological 
Society, in conferring upon Mr. Smith the first mark of public gratitude 
which it was in the power of that body to bestow. Mr. Sedgwick, while 
exercising upon that occasion, what he justly calls the ' high privilege ' 
of rewarding distinguished merit, has thus adverted to the labours of 
preceding inquirers : — ' The works of these authors were, however, 
entirely unknown to Mr. Smith during his early life, and every step of 
his progress was made without any assistance from them. But I will go 
further, and affirm, that had they all been known to him, they would 
take nothing from the substantial merit of his discoveries. Fortunately 
placed in a country where all our great secondary groups are brought 
near together, he became acquainted in early life with many of their com- 
plex relations : he saw particular species of fossils in particular groups 
of strata, and in no others ; and giving generalization to phsenomena, 
which men of less original minds would have regarded as merely local, he 
proved, so early as 1791, the continuity of certain groups of strata, by 
their organic remains alone, where the mineral type was wanting. He 
made large collections of fossils ; and the moment an opportunity 
presented itself, he arranged them all stratigraphically. Having once 
succeeded in identifying groups of strata by means of their fossils, he 
saw the whole importance of the inference, — gave it its utmost extension, 
seized upon it as the master-principle of our science ; — by the help of it 
disentangled the structure of a considerable part of England, — and 
never rested from his labours till the public was fairly in possession of 
his principles. If these be not the advances of an original mind, I do 
not know where we are to find them : and I affirm with confidence, after 
the facts already stated, that the Council of the Geological Society were 
justified in the terms of their reward ; and that Mr. William Smith was 
