10 
wealth, too often only precipitate their ruin ; and I earnestly 
hope and believe, that not only by the aid of this School of Mines, 
but also by the more general spread of scientific education 
throughout the land, much may be done to prevent the frequent 
recurrence of so great a waste of energy and capital. To this 
particular end the more general diffusion of such authentic 
documents as the Government maps and sections will in time 
materially contribute, and much capital now wasted be skilfully 
applied, or diverted into other channels. 
In Phillips’s life of Smith several interesting notices are given 
of fruitless trials for coal in the Oxford clay, near Oxford and 
Wincanton. That at Wincanton was persevered in against the 
strong remonstrances of Smith. And here, instead of assuming 
a complete acquaintance in each of my audience of all the facts 
that bear on such cases (of which I shall cite other examples), 
you must permit me to explain one or two points that properly 
belong to a more advanced part of my course, but which it is now 
needful to point out for the full understanding of the subject. 
I have alluded to the fact that tbe principal masses of strata 
were each in succession accumulated in sea bottoms ; and these 
accumulations were composed of various sediments, just as at 
the present day quantities of mud, sand, and shingle are borne 
by rivers from the land, or torn from coasts and spread abroad 
on the floor of the ocean, to become the tombs of the creatures 
and plants that inhabit it. These beds have been, according to 
varying conditions, more or less consolidated, partially heaved 
above the waters, dislocated, invaded by igneous products, 
disintegrated, and denuded, their materials being often re-em- 
ployed in the formation of later strata. And this process has 
been the course of nature through all traceable time. Hence it 
follows that the rocks of continents and islands formed by such 
disturbances are necessarily of earlier date than the strata con- 
structed from their wreck, and deposited in the surrounding 
seas; and the unconformity of one set of rocks to any other 
set will be proportionate to the amount of disturbance of the 
strata so upheaved, denuded, and often deeply depressed beneath 
newer accumulations. This unconformity was, as early as 
1669, alluded to by Steno in his Prodromus, in which, by a 
