478 
DR. HENRY WOODWARD ON EAST ANGLIAN GEOLOGY. 
by pilgrims (who wore this badge) on their way to Rome : thus the 
poet writes : — 
“ The pilgrim’s staff and scrip he bore, 
And placed the cockle in his hat before.” 
Gesner, a botanist of Zurich, adopted in 1759 the same views 
as Steno, and showed that as many changes of land and sea had taken 
place, and that by slow degrees, occupying thousands of years in 
their accomplishment, such fossils could not possibly be referable 
to the Hoachian Deluge; the animals and shells having lived upon 
the spots where they were discovered. 
Although many great names may be cited as having published 
learned works, a few in favour of natural causes, but many more 
advocating fantastic explanations to account for geological phenom- 
ena, it was not until the days of William Smith (1769 — 1839), 
that a real and solid advance was made towards the establishing of 
geology on a sure foundation. 
William Smith, LL.D. (born 1769, died 1839, aged 70 years). 
Though only a poor lad, brought up at Churchill, a village in 
Oxfordshire, Smith early displayed a keen power of observation, 
and a habit of collecting fossils ; in time he became a land surveyor. 
Whilst thus employed he discovered that the strata composing the 
country followed each other in a regular and orderly succession, 
each bed being characterised by its own particular fossils, and having 
a general tendency or “dip” to the south-east. In the course of 
his work he produced (in 1815) a Geological Map of England and 
Wales on which he laid down the main lines of the various forma- 
tions, which (with slight modifications) remain the same to the 
present day, showing the patient and exhaustive manner in which 
his task was performed. 
As a geologist of the highest eminence, and a teacher, the name of 
Professor Sedgwick (1784 — 1873) must always rank in the first 
place. He was a fellow of Trinity College in 1810, and succeeded 
Professor Hailstone in the chair of geology at Cambridge in 1818. 
This chair (founded by Dr. John Woodward) was originally 
designed by him to maintain the doctrine “ that all fossils were the 
result of a universal deluge which had once swept over the whole 
earth, and to the agency of which, by gravitation, all the strata 
