Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
An account is here given of the recent discovery at Oxford of a hitherto unrecorded MS. in William Smith's handwriting, giving the list of Strata as known to him in 1797 and differing in some respects from the famous list dictated by him two years later at Bath to the Rev. B. Richardson and the Rev. Joseph Townsend, a copy of which is preserved in the Geological Society's collection. The list is reproduced here in its original form and spelling, together with a number of annotations.
page 180 note 1 Memoirs of William Smith, pp. 21–22 (1844).Google Scholar
page 180 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 18, 23–6.Google Scholar
page 180 note 3 Cox, L. R., Proc. Yorks. Geol. Soc., xxv, pp. 81–90 (1942).Google Scholar
page 180 note 4 See Phillips, op. cit., p. 21. Phillips misquotes the MS. where it refers to the proposed contents of the first part of the work. The MS. reads: “The first … should treat of the structure of the earth in a general way.” Phillips replaces the word “structure” by “strata”.
page 187 note 1 This list has been reproduced several times, e.g. by Smith himself, Memoir to the Map and Delineation of the Strata, table facing p. 8 (1815), and by T. Sheppard, Proc. Yorks. Geol. Soc., xix, table facing p. 127 (1917).