That such fossils had been found, in such rocks, was immediately acknowledged by Mr. Richardson to be true, though the connection had not before presented itself to his mind; but when Mr. Smith added the assurance, that everywhere throughout this district, and to considerable distances around, it was a general law that the “_same strata were found always in the same order of superposition and contained the same peculiar fossils_,” his friend was both astonished and incredulous. He immediately acceded to Mr. Smith’s proposal for undertaking some field examinations to determine the truth of these assertions, and having interested in the object a new and learned associate, the Rev. Joseph Townsend (author of “Travels in Spain”), they at once executed the project. Among other places visited with this view was the detached hill on which Dundry Church is conspicuously elevated. From its form and position in respect of the lias of Keynsham, Mr. Smith had inferred that this hill was capped by the lowest of the Bath “freestones” (inferior oolite); and, from his general views, he expected to find in that rock the fossils which the freestones contained near Bath; that is to say, on the westward rise, which he believed to affect all the strata near Bath above the coal. It is needless now to say, that examination confirmed both the inference of the character of the rock and the conformity of its organic contents. The effect of this and other illustrations of the reality of Mr. Smith’s speculations was decisive. In general literature, and especially in natural history, Mr. Smith was immeasurably surpassed by his friends, but they acknowledged that, from his labours in a different quarter, a new light had begun to manifest itself in the previously dark horizon of geology, and they set themselves earnestly to make way for its auspicious influence. What a step was made from the old ideas that fossils were sports of nature to the proof that during the long ages of the earth’s history every deposit of river mud, sea-shore sand, and marine collection contained relics of its age of accumulation; and that there has been a succession of animals and plants on the earth foreshadowing those that now exist. One day, after dining together at the house of the Rev. Joseph Townsend, it was proposed by one of this triumvirate, that a tabular view of the main features of the subject, as it had been expounded by Mr. Smith, and verified and enriched by their joint labours, should be drawn up in writing. Richardson held the pen, and wrote down, from Smith’s dictation, the different strata according to their order of succession in descending order, commencing with the chalk, and numbered, in continuous series, down to the coal, below which the strata were not sufficiently determined, according to the scheme already noticed.