A guide to the fossil invertebrate animals in the Department of geology and palaeontology in the British museum (Natural history) . money to buybooks. By means of these he taught himself to suchpurpose that at the age of eighteen he obtained employmentas a land surveyor in Oxfordshire and the neighbouringcounties and, in 1793, was appointed to survey the courseof the intended Somersetshire coal canal near Bath. Sixyears work on this canal, added to his previous knowledge,enabled him to prove that the strata met with in thisdistrict followed each other in a regular and orderlysuccession, each b
A guide to the fossil invertebrate animals in the Department of geology and palaeontology in the British museum (Natural history) . money to buybooks. By means of these he taught himself to suchpurpose that at the age of eighteen he obtained employmentas a land surveyor in Oxfordshire and the neighbouringcounties and, in 1793, was appointed to survey the courseof the intended Somersetshire coal canal near Bath. Sixyears work on this canal, added to his previous knowledge,enabled him to prove that the strata met with in thisdistrict followed each other in a regular and orderlysuccession, each bed being marked by its own characteristicfossils, and having a general tendency to slope or dip to That this succession was no local phenomenon, andthat the same fossils were throughout characteristic of thesame beds, was subsequently proved by Smith in hisjourneyings over the greater part of Britain. The surveysmade on these journeyings enabled him, in 1815, to publishthe large map exhibited on the right hand of the entranceto this Gallery. This, the first geological map of England GUIDE FOSS. INVERT. PLATE WILLIAM SMITH COLLECTION. 7 and Wales, comprising also a part of Scotland, measures Gallery feet 9 inches by 6 feet 2 inches. Several sections acrossEngland, published by Smith in 1819, are placed on thewall around his bust. Here also are reproductions of thefirst small sketcli for the larger map coloured by him in1801, of a map of the country around Bath coloured geologi-cally by him in 1799, and of a table of strata dictated byhim in the same year.* The original MSS. of these werepresented by Smith to the Geological Society in 1831. Smiths views on the value of fossils to the geologist andsurveyor were enunciated in his works Strata identified byorganised fossils, of which four parts only were published(4to, 1816-1819), and Stratigraphical system of organisedfossils (4to, 1817). A set of the plates from the formerwork is exhibited in the Case below
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidguidet, booksubjectfossils
