preservation of their enclosed organic remains, that they could not fail to attract the early notice of observers. J. É. Guettard, G. F. Rouelle (1703–1770), N. Desmarest, A. L. Lavoisier (1743–1794) and others made observations in this interesting district. But it was reserved for Cuvier (1769–1832) and A. Brongniart (1770–1847) to work out the detailed succession of the Tertiary formations, and to show how each of these is characterized by its own peculiar assemblage of organic remains. The later progress of investigation has slightly corrected and greatly amplified the tabular arrangement established by these authors in 1808, but the broad outlines of the Tertiary stratigraphy of the Paris basin remain still as Cuvier and Brongniart left them. The most important subsequent change in the classification of the Tertiary formations was made by Sir Charles Lyell, who, conceiving in 1828 the idea of a classification of these rocks by reference to their relative proportions of living and extinct species of shells, established, in collaboration with G. P. Deshayes, the now universally accepted divisions Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene.
Long before Cuvier and Brongniart published an account of their researches, another observer had been at work among the Secondary formations of the west of England, and had independently discovered that the component members of these formations were each distinguished by a peculiar group of organic remains; and that this distinction could be used to discriminate them over all the region through which he had traced them. The remarkable man who arrived at this far-reaching generalization was William Smith (1769–1839), a land surveyor who, in the prosecution of his professional business, found opportunities of traversing a great part of England, and of putting his deductions to the test. As the result of these journeys he accumulated materials enough to enable him to produce a geological map of the country, on which the distribution and succession of the rocks were for the first time delineated. Smith’s labours laid the foundation of stratigraphical geology in England and he was styled even in his lifetime the “Father of English geology.” From his day onward the significance of fossil organic remains gained rapidly increasing recognition. Thus in England the outlines traced by him among the Secondary and Tertiary formations were admirably filled in by Thomas Webster (1773–1844); while the Cretaceous series was worked out in still greater detail in the classic memoirs of William Henry Fitton (1780–1861).
There was one stratigraphical domain, however, into which William Smith did not enter. He traced his sequence of rocks down into the Coal Measures, but contented himself with only a vague reference to what lay underneath that formation. Though some of these underlying rocks had in various countries yielded abundant fossils, they had generally suffered so much from terrestrial disturbances, and their order of succession was consequently often so much obscured throughout western Europe, that they remained but little known for many years after the stratigraphy of the Secondary and Tertiary series had been established. At last in 1831 Murchison began to attack this terra incognita on the borders of South Wales, working into it from the Old Red Sandstone, the stratigraphical position of which was well known. In a few years he succeeded in demonstrating the existence of a succession of formations, each distinguished by its own peculiar assemblage of organic remains which were distinct from those in any of the overlying strata. To these formations he gave the name of Silurian (q.v.). From the key which his researches supplied, it was possible to recognize in other countries the same order of formations and the same sequence of fossils, so that, in the course of a few years, representatives of the Silurian system were found far and wide over the globe. While Murchison was thus engaged, Sedgwick devoted himself to the more difficult task of unravelling the complicated structure of North Wales. He eventually made out the order of the several formations there, with their vast intercalations of volcanic material. He named them the Cambrian system (q.v.), and found them to contain fossils, which, however, lay for some time unexamined by him. He at first believed, as Murchison also did, that his rocks were all older than any part of the Silurian series. It was eventually discovered that a portion of them was equivalent to the lower part of that series. The oldest of Sedgwick’s groups, containing distinctive fossils, retain the name Cambrian, and are of high interest, as they enclose the remains of the earliest faunas which are yet well known. Sedgwick and Murchison rendered yet another signal service to stratigraphical geology by establishing, in 1839, on a basis of palaeontological evidence supplied by W. Lonsdale, the independence of the Devonian system (q.v.).
For many years the rocks below the oldest fossiliferous deposits received comparatively little attention. They were vaguely described as the “crystalline schists” and were often referred to as parts of the primeval crust in which no chronology was to be looked for. W. E. Logan (1798–1875) led the way, in Canada, by establishing there several vast series of rocks, partly of crystalline schists and gneisses (Laurentian) and partly of slates and conglomerates (Huronian). Later observers, both in Canada and the United States, have greatly increased our knowledge of these rocks, and have shown their structure to be much more complex than was at first supposed (see Archean System).
During the latter half of the 19th century the most important development of stratigraphical geology was the detailed working out and application of the principle of zonal classification to the fossiliferous formations—that is, the determination of the sequence and distribution of organic remains in these formations, and the arrangement of the strata into zones, each of which is distinguished by a peculiar assemblage of fossil species (see under Part VI.). The zones are usually named after one especially characteristic species. This system of classification was begun in Germany with reference to the members of the Jurassic system (q.v.) by A. Oppel (1856–1858) and F. A. von Quenstedt (1858), and it has since been extended through the other Mesozoic formations. It has even been found to be applicable to the Palaeozoic rocks, which are now subdivided into palaeontological zones. In the Silurian system, for example, the graptolites have been shown by C. Lapworth to furnish a useful basis for zonal subdivisions. The lowest fossiliferous horizon in the Cambrian rocks of Europe and North America is known as the Olenellus zone, from the prominence in it of that genus of trilobite.
Another conspicuous feature in the progress of stratigraphy during the second half of the 19th century was displayed by the rise and rapid development of what is known as Glacial geology. The various deposits of “drift” spread over northern Europe, and the boulders scattered across the surface of the plains had long attracted notice, and had even found a place in popular legend and superstition. When men began to examine them with a view to ascertain their origin, they were naturally regarded as evidences of the Noachian deluge. The first observer who drew attention to the smoothed and striated surfaces of rock that underlie the Drifts was Hutton’s friend, Sir James Hall, who studied them in the lowlands of Scotland and referred them to the action of great debacles of water, which, in the course of some ancient terrestrial convulsion, had been launched across the face of the country. Playfair, however, pointed out that the most potent geological agents for the transportation of large blocks of stone are the glaciers. But no one was then bold enough to connect the travelled boulders with glaciers on the plains of Germany and of Britain. Yet the transporting agency of ice was invoked in explanation of their diffusion. It came to be the prevalent belief among the geologists of the first half of the 19th century, that the fall of temperature, indicated by the gradual increase in the number of northern species of shells in the English Crag deposits, reached its climax during the time of the Drift, and that much of the north and centre of Europe was then submerged beneath a sea, across which floating icebergs and floes transported the materials of the Drift and dropped the scattered boulders. As the phenomena are well developed around the Alps, it was necessary to suppose that the submergence involved the lowlands of the Continent up to the foot of that mountain chain—a geographical change so stupendous as to demand much more evidence than was adduced in its support. At last Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), who had varied his palaeontological studies at Neuchâtel by excursions into the Alps, was so much struck by the proofs of the former far greater extension of the Swiss glaciers, that he pursued the investigation and satisfied himself that the ice had formerly extended from the Alpine valleys right across the great plain of Switzerland, and had transported huge boulders from the central mountains to the flanks of the Jura. In the year 1840 he visited Britain and soon found evidence of similar conditions there. He showed that it was not by submergence in a sea cumbered with floating ice, but by the former presence of vast glaciers or sheets of ice that the Drift and erratic blocks had been distributed. The idea thus propounded by him did not at once command complete approval, though traces of ancient glaciers in Scotland and Wales were soon detected by native geologists, particularly by W. Buckland, Lyell, J. D. Forbes and Charles Maclaren. Robert Chambers (1802–1871) did good service in gathering additional evidence from Scotland and Norway in favour of Agassiz’s views, which steadily gained adherents until, after some quarter of a century, they were adopted by the great majority of geologists in Britain, and subsequently in other countries. Since that time the literature of geology has been swollen by a vast number of contributions in which the history of the Glacial period, and its records both in the Old and New World, have been fully discussed.
Rise and Progress of Palaeontological Geology.—As this branch of the science deals with the evidence furnished by fossil organic remains as to former geographical conditions, it early attracted observers who, in the superficial beds of marine shells found at some distance from the coast, saw proofs of the former submergence of the land under the sea. But the occurrence of fossils embedded in the heart of the solid rocks of the mountains offered much greater difficulties of explanation, and further progress was consequently slow. Especially baneful was the belief that these objects were mere sports of nature, and had no connexion with any once living organisms. So long as the true organic origin of the fossil plants and animals contained in the rocks was in dispute, it was hardly possible that much advance could be made in their systematic study, or in the geological deductions to be drawn from them. One good result of the controversy, however, was to be seen in the large collections of these “formed stones” that were gathered together in the cabinets and museums of the 17th and 18th centuries. The accumulation and comparison of these objects naturally led to the production of treatises in which they were described and not unfrequently illustrated by good engravings. Switzerland was more particularly
