HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 3 
most valuable freestones, as well as many other economic pro- 
ducts, and the numerous excavations naturally attracted notice. 
Moreover the strata themselves are often exceedingly rich in 
organic remains. These were noticed by Leland in his celebrated 
Itinerary (begun about 1538),* and later on they excited the 
curiosity of the Naturalists of the seventeenth century. 
The growth of our knowledge was, however, dependent chiefly 
on the economic products, for the building-stones have been 
employed, since Roman and Saxon times, in the construction ot 
city-walls, bridge?, castles, abbeys, cathedrals, churches, and 
humbler edifices. Various rocks, including both Lias and Oolites 
were used by the Romans in their tesselated pavements. t 
From these early times, in fact ever since the beds were 
quarried for freestone, road-stone, or lime-burning, many local 
names came into use, such as the Barnack Rag, Cheltenham 
freestone, Taynton stone, Doulting stone, Ham Hill stone, 
Chilmark stone, &c. As some of the beds, worked so long ago, 
became exhausted, or as different landholders ascertained that 
stone could be obtained on their grounds, so quarries were opened 
in other localities, and gradually a knowledge must have been 
acquired of the " run " or " lie " of the principal beds. The same 
remarks would apply to the chief deposits of tile-earth, brick-earth, 
and pottery clay. 
While much information must thus have been gained by those 
engaged in the practical work of quarrying and brick-making, and 
by those who selected the stone for building-purposes; yet it was 
long before any systematic attention could be given to the subject, 
or the results of observations could be generally known. After 
the introduction of printing, and when maps had attained a fair 
degree of accuracy, the attention of the learned became more and 
more drawn to the subject. In the seventeenth century the 
general superficial distribution of the rocks was so manifest, that 
proposals were made to indicate their limits on maps, and to 
Dr. Martin Lister (1684) we owe the first practical suggestion 
for a geological survey. J 
The attention of the earlier Naturalists was devoted chiefly 
to the origin of the "Extraneous Fossils," "Petrifactions," or 
Organic Remains found in the various strata ; but they were 
often perplexed to decide whether these " formed stones " were 
" naturally produced by some extraordinary plastic virtue, latent 
in the earth, in quarries where they are found, or whether they 
rather owe their form and figure to the shells of the fishes they 
represent, " Many illustrations of these fossils were published 
in the works of Robert Plot (1677), Martin Lister (1678), 
* Itinerary, Ed. by T. Hearnc, vol. viii. p. 2 (Oxford, 1710-12) ; A. C. Earn say, 
Passages in the History of Geology (part 2), 1849, p. 15. 
f J. Buckman and C. H. Xewmarch, Illustrations of the 'Remains, of Roman Art, 
p. 49. 
J See Phil. Trans., vol. xiv. p. 739 ; and Fittou, Notes on the Progress of 
Beology in England, reprinted from the Phil. Mag. (1832-33). 1833. 
Plot, Natural History of Oxfordshire, p. 111. See also Phillips, Geology of 
Oxford, pp. 2, &c. 
A 2 
