372 
SECOND REPORT -1832. 
mineral geology, became thus ripely prepared to appreciate the 
value of the materials previously collected by the unassisted 
acuteness and industry of Smith, which had illustrated the 
whole secondary series of formations in the same spirit as 
Cuvier and Brongniart had applied to a portion of the tertiary 
class, and which thus, after an interval of neglect, assumed 
their just place and rank in the geological system*. 
From this period the views of the zoological school were 
universally adopted by the most active and efficient labourers 
in the progress of English geology, and were by them from 
time to time greatly extended. 
The establishment of the Geological Society of London in 
1808, afforded also, about the same time, a central point of re¬ 
union to those engaged in this pursuit,—an establishment emi¬ 
nently calculated to stimulate their endeavours by the pro¬ 
motion of mutual intercourse, and the comparison of the infor¬ 
mation individually obtained,—a point in every science very im¬ 
portant, but most emphatically indispensable in one which can 
never be effectually advanced without the steady cooperation 
of numerous independent observers. Besides accomplishing 
this, the Geological Society was also most useful as affording 
the facility of publication to the researches thus prosecuted: 
indeed it has been w r ell observed, that if we consider our phi¬ 
losophical Societies merely in the light of publishing engines, 
we shall have no mean idea presented to us of the very im¬ 
portant advantages which they yield to science. 
The first volume of the Transactions of the Geological Soci¬ 
ety was published in 1811, and it well illustrates the actual state 
of the science at that date: the greater part of its contents ob¬ 
viously belong to the Wernerian school, which we have charac¬ 
terized by its almost exclusive attention to primitive and mine- 
ralogical geology. The paper by Dr. Berger on the Geology of 
Dorset, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, will well exhibit the 
low state of secondary geology at that period; but another paper 
by Mr. Parkinson on the Organic Remains of the neighbourhood 
of London, including a comparative view of Cuvier’s then recent 
discoveries in the Basin of Paris, sufficiently evinces the dawn of 
a more intelligent system; and it deserves remark, that the intro¬ 
duction of this, the first respectable paper on secondary geology 
* As the bases of this advanced geological system mainly depend on an exact 
knowledge of the zoological characters of the remains contained in the strata,— 
a knowledge extending to the most minute specific differences,—this could 
scarcely have been attained anteriorly to the considerable additions made by 
the French systematic writers, especially Lamarck, to the arrangements of the 
Linnaean school. 
