REPORT ON GEOLOGY. 
published by the Society, expressly refers to the discoveries of 
Smithy as the great basis on which all sound and really scientific 
researches on this subject must be established. 
We cannot better illustrate the rapid march of geology from 
the period when this new light burst in upon the system, than 
by comparing the. Memoir on the Isle of Wight and the Dor¬ 
setshire Coast, published by Mr. Webster in the second volume 
of the Geological Transactions , with the meagre notices of the 
same district by Dr. Berger, already alluded to as having ap¬ 
peared in the former volume. In this paper Webster ably fol¬ 
lows the admirable model presented by Cuvier and Brongniart’s 
Memoir of the Basin of Paris; with the geological structure of 
which he shows that of the isle of Wight closely to agree, both 
districts exhibiting the very same alternations of marine and 
fluviatile beds* reposing on the chalk; while in one respect 
the phenomena observed in the Isle of Wight are rendered 
even more interesting than those of the Parisian basin, by the 
violent convulsions which have here dislocated the strata and 
thrown a large portion of them from a horizontal into a vertical 
position. If we compare this Memoir of Mr. Webster with the 
preceding one of Dr. Berger, they at once show themselves to 
belong to two very distinct eras of science ; and it is difficult to 
believe that the interval which elapsed between their respective 
publication was only three or four years. 
The publication in 1815 of Smith's general geological map of 
Englandf, succeeded by his more detailed separate county maps, 
illustrated by the work of the same author on “ the English 
Strata identified by Organic Remains,’' and by the contempora¬ 
neous production of Sowerby on Mineral Conchology, filled up 
the whole great outline of English geology, and left to those who 
followed little more than the task of condensing and concentra¬ 
ting what was already ascertained, and enlarging and rendering 
more precise the detail. I should speak, however, in more di¬ 
stinguished terms than these, of the great geological map of En¬ 
gland drawn up by Mr. Greenough, and published by the Geo- 
* The same anoplotheria, &c., have subsequently been found in the fluviatile 
formations of the Isle of Wight as in those of the basin of Paris. 
f It is quite erroneous, however, to attribute, as has been sometimes done, to 
Smith the earliest attempt to execute such maps ; their construction was origi¬ 
nally proposed by Lister, 1684 ; in 1746 Guettard published many such maps, 
although their execution was necessarily at this early period vague and imper¬ 
fect; and before 1796 Dr. Maton had thus delineated the geology of the south¬ 
western counties; and the various Reports of the Board of Agriculture had in¬ 
cluded similar representations of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, 
Kent, and Devonshire. 
