be reproducible elsewhere. He might understand the miners’ motives—but what they said made no sense at all.
Wasn’t it more likely that some similarly arranged succession of strata was actually to be found among all the rocks of England, whether they were above or below the coal? Whether they were younger or older than it? And further, wasn’t it likely, if this orderliness of succession proved true elsewhere, that someone with a good eye and a good imagination could find the arrangements and the possibilities for identifying and following unseen strata, the hidden underground strata, among all the rocks of the world?
Might there not thus be some way of predicting what lay where, how deep it lay, how thick the beds were likely to be, and what might lie above and below it? And thus, might there not be a way of drawing a guide to this hitherto hidden underneath of the planet, in much the same way one drew guides to the visible world, to the simple topography of the overburden?
Had he not, in thinking so, stumbled onto an original, fundamental truth? Wasn’t it likely that everything he had reasoned for the rocks at High Littleton was true for everywhere else as well? And if it was, then wasn’t it likely that everything geological, everywhere—whether it was underground or overground, whether it was deep or shallow, whether it was visible or not—could be predicted, could be drawn, and thus could be mapped?
N ew observations were needed. More data, more facts, more work, below and beyond the very special world of the coalmines, beyond the age-limiting, fossil-limiting, lithology-limiting purlieus of the Carboniferous. William Smith needed a bigger canvas on which to sketch the first portrait of what he was now nervously beginning to imagine.
And it was then, thanks to connections, location, and coincidence, that William Smith stumbled onto the chance that made him. The coal from Somerset’s dozens of mines needed to be moved. The perfidious Welsh across the Avon, having caught the duke of Bridgewater’s fierce mania, were reported to be building a canal and getting ready to move their coal along it—and suddenly all Somerset was fretful, its miners and mineowners concerned that the county might lose out to Wales, that its coal would never get to the markets. A great Somerset canal urgently needed to be built.
William Smith, who was by now an established master of all the local mysteries of coal, a clear and present friend to the local landed mineowners, and known to be clever with the theodolite, the plane table, and the chain, was the ideal man to be involved. He knew how to carry out a survey. He was obviously the man to plan the route, to make sure the canal snaked properly from coalfield to market. William Smith, it was decided, should be the Somerset Coal Canal’s first surveyor.
He accepted the job with almost unseemly relish. He had a motive that he never vouchsafed to his new employers. Not only were the wages excellent, the perks more than acceptable, and the possibilities of share options in the new canal tempting—but the process of building a canal meant that, quite simply, a great swath of the county needed to be sliced open, cut neatly and deliberately in half.
And in the process of cutting the land he might be able to confirm his theories, and see if that original and fundamental truth was indeed a truth at all. By slicing open this vast line of survey, and then building a deep canal halfway across the county, the land itself would for the first time be exposed. It wouldbe laid bare and fresh for Smith to see, to examine in detail, and to wonder if he might, just might, be right.
Right in thinking, that is, that one could tell which strata were which by their nature and by their enclosed fossils. If one could do that one could, in theory, find and identify the outcrop of a particular stratum in one place, and then find and identify it in another place and another, and before long be
Wasn’t it more likely that some similarly arranged succession of strata was actually to be found among all the rocks of England, whether they were above or below the coal? Whether they were younger or older than it? And further, wasn’t it likely, if this orderliness of succession proved true elsewhere, that someone with a good eye and a good imagination could find the arrangements and the possibilities for identifying and following unseen strata, the hidden underground strata, among all the rocks of the world?
Might there not thus be some way of predicting what lay where, how deep it lay, how thick the beds were likely to be, and what might lie above and below it? And thus, might there not be a way of drawing a guide to this hitherto hidden underneath of the planet, in much the same way one drew guides to the visible world, to the simple topography of the overburden?
Had he not, in thinking so, stumbled onto an original, fundamental truth? Wasn’t it likely that everything he had reasoned for the rocks at High Littleton was true for everywhere else as well? And if it was, then wasn’t it likely that everything geological, everywhere—whether it was underground or overground, whether it was deep or shallow, whether it was visible or not—could be predicted, could be drawn, and thus could be mapped?
N ew observations were needed. More data, more facts, more work, below and beyond the very special world of the coalmines, beyond the age-limiting, fossil-limiting, lithology-limiting purlieus of the Carboniferous. William Smith needed a bigger canvas on which to sketch the first portrait of what he was now nervously beginning to imagine.
And it was then, thanks to connections, location, and coincidence, that William Smith stumbled onto the chance that made him. The coal from Somerset’s dozens of mines needed to be moved. The perfidious Welsh across the Avon, having caught the duke of Bridgewater’s fierce mania, were reported to be building a canal and getting ready to move their coal along it—and suddenly all Somerset was fretful, its miners and mineowners concerned that the county might lose out to Wales, that its coal would never get to the markets. A great Somerset canal urgently needed to be built.
William Smith, who was by now an established master of all the local mysteries of coal, a clear and present friend to the local landed mineowners, and known to be clever with the theodolite, the plane table, and the chain, was the ideal man to be involved. He knew how to carry out a survey. He was obviously the man to plan the route, to make sure the canal snaked properly from coalfield to market. William Smith, it was decided, should be the Somerset Coal Canal’s first surveyor.
He accepted the job with almost unseemly relish. He had a motive that he never vouchsafed to his new employers. Not only were the wages excellent, the perks more than acceptable, and the possibilities of share options in the new canal tempting—but the process of building a canal meant that, quite simply, a great swath of the county needed to be sliced open, cut neatly and deliberately in half.
And in the process of cutting the land he might be able to confirm his theories, and see if that original and fundamental truth was indeed a truth at all. By slicing open this vast line of survey, and then building a deep canal halfway across the county, the land itself would for the first time be exposed. It wouldbe laid bare and fresh for Smith to see, to examine in detail, and to wonder if he might, just might, be right.
Right in thinking, that is, that one could tell which strata were which by their nature and by their enclosed fossils. If one could do that one could, in theory, find and identify the outcrop of a particular stratum in one place, and then find and identify it in another place and another, and before long be
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