Genre:

Essay, Drollery, Serial

Subjects:

Geology, Stratigraphy, Sociology, Class, Analogy, Human Species

    Likening social to geological strata, society is divided into 'three great strata, called High Life—Middle Life—and Low Life'. The article further divides society into the 'Superior Class', 'Transition Class', 'Metamorphic Class', and 'Primitive Formation'. Details characteristics of each class. For example, 'Superior Class', also labelled the 'St. James' Series', includes people 'wearing coronets' and those who are 'related to coronets'. The 'Transition Class', is subdivided into 'Russell-square group', including people 'who give dinners to the superior classes', and the 'Clapham group', which includes people who 'keep a shop "concern" and a one-horse shay, and go to Ramsgate for three weeks in the dog-days'. Notes that this latter stratum is 'characterised by its fossil remains', such as watches and snuff-boxes. The 'Primitive Formation' is subdivided into the 'Whitechapel group', and 'St Giles's Group', which consists of 'Tag-rag and bob-tail in varieties'.