THE SILURIAN ROCKS OF INGLEBOROUGH

Abstract

In the year 1822 two men might have been seen walking and talking together over Kirkby Moor. The elder was a plain, matter-of-fact sort of man of about 54 years of age. We should soon learn that he was not a native of our northern counties, but one born and bred in the Midlands. We should not be long with him before we found out that he was a clear-headed, far-sighted observer of men and of nature. He had the quiet, determined bearing of one who had gone through struggles in early life in which a man of less tenacity of purpose would have succumbed. He had, however, gained the great object of his life; had earned an honourable independence and achieved a great scientific success. He had constructed, single-handed, a geological map of England, and had determined the great principles of the succession of strata and their identification by means of the included organic remains, for this was William Smith. The younger was a man of about 37, a brilliant scholar of great academic distinction and full of imagination. Intellectual vigour that loved to grapple with the most difficult problems of the universe flashed out of his dark eyes and rippled in his rapid, racy speech, which was redolent of his home in the Yorkshire dales, for this was Adam Sedgwick. Nine years later, from the Presidential Chair of the Geological Society, Sedgwick gave William Smith the title by which he will be ever fondly known—“the father of ...