The ancestors of William Smith were a race of farmers who owned small tracts of land, and had been settled in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire for many generations.

William Smith was born at Churchill, a village in Oxfordshire, on the 23rd of March, 1769, the year which gave birth to Cuvier. Of his parents he always spoke with great regard, but there is little in the recollections which he has preserved of them, to show in what degree they contributed to form his remarkable character. His father he described as “a very ingenious mechanic,” and mentions as the cause of his death a severe cold caught while engaged in the erection of some machinery. Deprived of this parent before he was eight years old, it was fortunate for him that his mother was a woman of ability, of gentle and charitable disposition, and attentive to the education of her children. An expressive pencil sketch and a characteristic description, both from memory, record his devotion to his mother.

According to his own account, however, not only were the means of his instruction at the village school very limited, but they were in some degree interfered with by his own wandering and musing habits. The rural games in those “merrie daies” of England might sometimes attract the wayward and comparatively unrestrained scholar from his books; but he was more frequently learning of another mistress, and forming, for after-life, a habit of close and curious contemplation of nature.

After his father’s death and his mother’s second marriage, the person to whom he was principally to look up to for protection, was his father’s eldest brother, to a portion of whose property he was heir. From this kinsman, who was but little pleased with his nephew’s love of collecting the “pundibs”[2] and “poundstones,” or “quoitstones,”[3] and had no sympathies with his fancies of carving sun-dials on the soft brown “oven-stone”[4] of the neighbourhood, he with great difficulty wrung, by repeated entreaty, money for the purchase of a few books fit to instruct a boy in the rudiments of geometry and surveying. But the practical farmer was better satisfied when the youth manifested an intelligent interest in the processes of draining and improving land; and there is no doubt that young William profited in after-life by the experience, if it may be so called, which he gathered in his boyhood while accompanying his relative (“old William”) over his lands at Over Norton.

Whatever he saw, was remembered for ever. To the latest hours of life he retained a clear and complete recollection of almost every event of his boyhood and often interested young and old by his vivid pictures of what he had seen when a child. These notices would be swelled to an unreasonable degree by introducing the pleasant stories of “the narrative old man;” but the following recollections, written in his seventieth year, of events which had passed fifty-six years before, are worth preserving as evidence of this peculiar circumstantiality of memory.

“I was early a tall and strong-grown boy, and in my way to London, between twelve and thirteen years of age, I particularly noticed the great work of cutting down the chalk hill at Henley-upon-Thames, and how the loaded carriages on an inclined plane were made to bring up the empty ones.

“I was in London shortly after the riots of Lord George Gordon; and at the time when news of Rodney’s defeat of the French fleet arrived.

“There was then a halfpenny toll for foot-persons passing over Blackfriars Bridge; the Albion Mills (worked by steam power) had just before been burnt down.

“Criminals were hanged at Tyburn, where there were cow-houses with wood seats on top for persons to see the executions.

“From Manchester Square to the Edgeware Road and Paddington, there were footpaths entirely across open fields. The buildings on the side of the square were unfinished; but, as more connected with what relates to the earth, I saw how the ground was made in Manchester Square, for a poor fellow, in turning his cartload of slush, had let his horse and cart slip down, so that he was up to his middle in mud, endeavouring to extricate his horse just as I passed by. This was on the east side of the square.”

In 1783, and from this time to 1787, the young man, without instruction or sympathy, prosecuted irregularly, but with ardour and success, the studies to which his mind was awakened. He began to draw, attempted to colour, became tolerably versed in the geometry and calculations then thought sufficient for engineers and surveyors, and by these acquirements, at the age of eighteen, so strongly recommended himself to Mr. Edward Webb, of Stow-on-the-Wold, who had been invited to make a complete survey of the parish of Churchill, for the purpose of enclosure, that he became assistant to that most able and excellent man, and was taken into his family.

This was the critical moment; from this event flowed all the current of his useful life, and to the same origin may be ascribed many of the peculiar habits and feelings, the contrasted lights and shades, which diversified his character.

Edward Webb was, like his pupil, self-taught, and very slightly acquainted with languages and general literature, but possessed of great ingenuity and skill in mechanics, mensuration, logarithms, algebra and fluxions. His practice as a surveyor included many things now conceded to the engineer, such as the determination of the forces of water, and planning machinery. His instruments were commonly invented, often made and divided by himself; peculiar pentagraphs, theodolites, scales, and even compasses and field books, of new construction enriched the office at Stow, and stimulated the young men who were fortunate enough to be placed in it, to thought and exertion. “I admired,” says the subject of this memoir, “the talent of my master, his placid and ever unruffled temper, and his willingness to let me get on, for I required no teaching.”

Speedily entrusted with the management of all the ordinary business of a surveyor, Mr. Smith traversed, in continual activity, the oolitic lands of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, the lias clays and red marls of Warwickshire; visited (1788) the Salperton tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal, and (1790) examined the soils and circumstances connected with a boring for coal in the New Forest, opposite the Shoe alehouse at Plaitford. All the varieties of soil, in so many surveys in different districts, were particularly noticed, and compared with the general aspect and character of the country, and the agricultural and commercial appropriations. The arrangement of the lias limestone beds in Warwickshire contrasted with the neighbouring red marls at Inkborough, the boring for coal in some dark lias clays on the road to Warwick, the absence of arenaceous beds from the limestones of Churchill—these were some of the points treasured in a mind capable of combining them at a future time.

In 1793 we find him engaged in executing surveys and complete systems of levelling, for the line of a proposed canal. In the course of the operations which he performed in the summer and autumn, a speculation which had come into his mind regarding a general law affecting the strata of the district, was submitted to proof and confirmed. He had supposed that the strata lying above the coal were not laid horizontally, but inclined; that they were all inclined in one direction, viz., the eastward, so as to successively terminate at the surface, and thus to “resemble, on a large scale, the ordinary appearance of superposed slices of bread and butter.” This supposition was now proved to be correct by the levelling processes executed in two parallel valleys, for in each of the levelled lines the strata of “red ground,” “lias,” and “freestone” (afterwards called “oolite”), came down in an eastern direction and sunk below the level, and yielded place to the next in succession.

But at the same time it was known to Mr. Smith that the position of the strata of coal in Somersetshire was not generally conformed to that of the “red earth” “lias,” and other beds above; the same thing was proved to him by an inspection of the colliery at Bucklechurch, in Gloucestershire; he knew besides that the great faults which divide all the coal strata underground, were in general found not to divide any of the superincumbent rocks which formed the surface.

Geologists who, at the present time, notwithstanding the devoted attention which has been paid to the phenomena of local displacement, find a difficulty in understanding the causes, may imagine the perplexity in the mind of a discoverer. Mr. Smith felt this perplexity severely, but not long. The Canal Bill, on which he was engaged, received the sanction of Parliament in 1794; and one of the first steps taken by the judicious committee of management was to depute two members of their body to accompany Mr. Smith, “their engineer,” on a tour of inquiry and observation regarding the construction, management, and trade of other navigations in England and Wales.

The tour extended altogether nine hundred miles, and occupied between one and two months; by one route the party reached Newcastle, and by another returned, through Shropshire and Wales to Bath. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Perkins were gentlemen well acquainted with coal-working, and they willingly stayed to inspect every new invention applied to canals and collieries; but Mr. Smith’s treasured object of consideration on the road, that which occupied all his thoughts in the intervals of professional inquiries, was the aspect and structure of the country passed through, in order to determine if his preconceived generalizations of a settled order of succession, continuity of range at the surface, and general declination eastward, were true on a large scale.

It is needless now to say that his general views were justified; he found the strata from the vicinity of Bath and Bristol prolonged into the north of England, in the same general order of succession with the general eastward dip. There is, however, one part of the conclusions adopted in this rapid survey from a postchaise, which merits particular attention. He passed through York on the high road to Newcastle, and saw at a distance of from five to fifteen miles to the east the hills of chalk and oolite. He was satisfied of their nature by their contours and relative position, and by their position on the surface in relation to the lias and “red ground” occasionally seen on the road. This is, in fact, the only authority he could rely upon for drawing, in 1800, the continuations of the chalk of Wiltshire, and the oolite of Somersetshire, through the eastern parts of Yorkshire, but he drew them with a considerable approximation to accuracy.

Engaged for six years in setting out and superintending the works on the Somersetshire Coal Canal, Mr. Smith found but few opportunities of making known to scientific persons, the peculiar generalizations which had taken possession of his mind. But in the execution of these works he was putting his thoughts into practice, informing the contractors what would be the nature of the ground to be cut through, what parts of the canal would require unusual care to be kept water-tight, what was the most advantageous system of work. Another singular advantage attended this engagement. The notions which up to this time he had obtained regarding the distribution of organic remains were comparatively vague. He found peculiar plants in the “clift” above the coal, particular shells in the lias and oolites, but none in the red ground, and he had combined these simple facts so far as to see that “each stratum had been successively the bed of the sea, and contained in it the mineralized monuments of the races of organic beings then in existence.” But it was the necessity of possessing an accurate knowledge of the different sorts of rock, sand, and clay, which were to be cut through on the line of the canal, which led him to examine minutely and scrupulously into the distribution of the “fossils” which he had been in the habit of collecting. The result was a proposition which he proved to be locally true, and of practical value, and which has now a world-wide application, “that each stratum contained organized fossils peculiar to itself, and might, in cases otherwise doubtful, be recognized and discriminated from others like it, but in a different part of the series, by examination of them.” In other words, he discovered that strata are to be recognized by their fossils. He now remarked also the contrast between the rounded state and mixed condition of the fossils which lay in gravel deposits and the sharply preserved specimens lying in natural associations in the strata, and thus acquired a notion of the distinction between what were afterwards named diluvial and stratified deposits.

The possessor of all these generalizations, now (1795) twenty-six years of age, was still shrouded in the obscure village of High Littleton, but in this year he removed to Bath, and took up his abode in the central house of a short range of buildings called the Cottage Crescent, which occupied a picturesque and elevated site south of that city. “From this point,” says he, “the eye roved anxiously over the interesting expanse which extended before me to the Sugar-loaf mountain in Monmouthshire, and embraced all in the vicinities of Bath and Bristol. Then did a thousand thoughts occur to me, respecting the geology of that and adjacent districts continually under my eye, which have never been reduced to writing.” He continued to direct all the operations on the Somerset Coal Canal, and very copious note-books attest the constancy and exactitude of his attention to that occupation. To this cause, indeed, may be ascribed the extreme rarity of any essays, or even memoranda, from which the progress of his geological studies can be gathered.

That in January, 1796, he had begun to commit his thoughts to paper, in a lucid arrangement for publication, the written proofs remain. In 1797 he drew a larger general plan for such a work; but not till 1799, after his engagement ceased with the Coal Canal Company, did he make public his intention to compose a general work on the stratification of Britain, or enter on the prosecution of an actual survey of the geological structure of the whole of England and Wales.

In the execution of the canal, Mr. Smith had found the means of applying his newly acquired knowledge to useful practical problems, such as how to draw the line through a country full of porous rocks, so as best to retain the limited supplies of water which frequent mills left to the navigation, where to place bridges on a good foundation, how to intercept and conduct the springs, and where to open quarries of proper stone. We find him also engaged, as early as 1796, in the short intervals which could be snatched from the main business before him, in putting to practical proof his theoretical views of the earth’s structure and the properties of the mixed calcareous and argillaceous strata in the hills near Bath, by a new and successful process of land-draining.

The earliest connected remarks which have been found, bear the date of January, 1796, and relate to organic remains and their distribution in the different strata. The vicinity of Bath is rich in fossils, and fine collections were formed there previous to Mr. Smith’s researches. It might be after inspecting some of these treasures, whose full value was so entirely unknown to their owners, that the following reflections, which strikingly illustrate the enlarged state of his own views at that period, were penned:—

Gifted in a very uncommon degree with that philosophical faith in the generality and harmony of natural laws which is a characteristic of discoveries in natural science, Mr. Smith was at the same time remarkably disinclined to indulge in himself, or even to tolerate in others, mere speculations in geology. Whatever of this nature he found in the circle of his reading, was severely judged by a close collocation of the hypothesis which had been advanced with the phenomena of stratification which he had entirely established. These judgments might be erroneous in cases which required the knowledge of other data, not then collected, for a true and general solution; but the very unreasonableness of raising the standard of his own discoveries in a limited region, for condemning a speculation perhaps founded on other truths occurring elsewhere, shows how firmly these discoveries, and the influences belonging to them, were established and fortified in his mind. The following passage, written in January, 1796, might have been acknowledged by the author to contain his real opinions forty years later:—

“Therefore every man of prudence and observation who has paid the strictest attention to mineralogy, the structure of the earth, and the changes it has undergone, will be very cautious how he sets about to invent a system which nature cannot conform to without having recourse to subterraneous fires, volcanic eruptions, or uncommon convulsions, by which every hill and dale must have been formed and every rock must have been rent to form those chasms, which, in comparison to the strata they are found in, are no more than sun-cracks in a clod of clay; yet such has been the language of ingenious men, who have set their theoretical worlds a-going without either tooth or pinion of nature’s mechanism belonging to them.”

In October and November of this year (1796), we find him returning to the contemplation of organic remains; discussing the circumstances which attend the sparry substance occupying the place of the shell, which has been removed, in the lias, and the empty cavity, where the shell was, surrounding a loose stony cast of the interior, in the freestone (oolite).

That his mind was now actively employed in tracing out the bearings of the extensive subject before him, will be evident from the following extract, dated August, 1797:—

Smith had seen layers of limestone crowded with shells succeeded by others containing corals. He found ammonites and oysters in some, and insect remains in others, and his speculations assumed the curious phase of the sentences just noticed. But he soon became aware that accident had much to do with the presence of certain organic remains in strata, and that, whilst some fossils, like corals, once lived where they are now preserved in strata, others were carried there as the deposit collected.

A manuscript, dated December 2, 1796, Dunkerton, Swan Inn, headed “Strata in general, and their position,” and evidently intended for publication, commences thus:—

“The strata being found as regular on one side of a rivulet, river, deep valley or channel as on the other, over an extent of many miles, when proper allowance is made for the inclination, and for the variation of the surface, is it not reasonable to suppose that the same strata may be found as regular on one side of the sea or ocean as on opposite sides of a deep valley upon land, and if so, and the continuation of the strata is general, what is their general direction or drift? Is it in straight lines from pole to pole, or in curved lines surrounding the globe regularly inclined to the east?”

After hinting at a general cause for such an assumed regularity, he adds, “But all theories are best built on practical rules, which will enable any one to make such observations for himself as must carry conviction along with them; for a work so novel as this must expect to find some who will hardly believe what is plain to be seen; for all men do not see alike, nor can patiently trudge through the dirt to search for truth among the stubborn rocks where nature has best displayed her.... Shall, therefore, describe a number of quarries, cliffs, etc., at a great distance, etc. See Book——”

In what seems to be the continuation of this paper, we see the predominant desire of the author to establish the certainty and generality of the inclination of strata, which he had proved on a limited scale near Bath.

“If the strata lay horizontal, every part of the sea-shore would present the same beds at the water edge instead of that wonderful variety which is found on the coast and banks of every river and rivulet in the kingdom, especially those that run in an east and west direction, or nearly so. In such situations the young mineralogist may soon be convinced of that wonderful regularity which nature has adopted, especially if the shores are rocky; he will there find that, independent of partial and local dips which appear in different quarries of the same stone, the outlines, or top and bottom layers of each complete stratum or class of stones or earth, considered as a mass, have a general tendency towards the eastern horizon.”

By the term “dip” is meant the inclination that strata make with the horizon. Mr. W. Smith constantly brought forward his well worked out fact that the strata of England dip from west to east more or less. The oldest strata come to the surface in Wales and the lake districts, and because they were upheaved the newer strata were tilted and curved, and the slope is to the east.

In February, 1798, we find as part of the introduction to this contemplated work, an interesting notice of some of the steps by which the author was conducted to his general conclusions.

“It will be readily admitted by all classes of men, from the most accurate observers of nature to the simplest peasant, that there is some degree of regularity in the strata from whence our building materials are generally collected. Masons, miners, and quarrymen can identify particular beds of stone dug many miles apart; indeed, every cliff and quarry presents a true section of a great many beds of stone, which may be found of the same quality and in the same position in all or most of the neighbouring cliffs and quarries. And this regularity is nowhere more conspicuous than in the lias quarries of Somersetshire, from whence these observations first took their rise, about seven years since.

“For the stratification of stone struck me, who had not been accustomed to such appearances, as something very uncommon, and till I had learned the technical terms of the strata, and made a subterraneous journey or two, I could not conceive a clear idea of what seemed so familiar to the colliers; but when these difficulties were surmounted, and an intelligent bailiff accompanied me, I was much pleased with my peregrinations below, and soon learnt enough of the order of the strata to describe on a plan the manner of working the coal in the lands I was then surveying.

“Being engaged soon after to survey the lands and take the levels of a canal that was proposed to be made from the collieries to Bath, I observed a variation of the strata on the same line of level, and soon found that the lias rock, which about three miles back was full three hundred feet above this line, was now thirty feet below it, and became the bed of the river, and in that direction did not appear any more at the surface. This induced me to note the inclination of the same rock, which I knew was to be found at the head of two other valleys lying each about a mile distant from, and in a parallel direction to, the one just described, and accordingly found it to dip the same to the south-east, and sink under the rivers in a similar manner.

“From this I began to consider that other strata might also have some general inclination as well as this (though I had been frequently told by the colliers that there was no regularity in the strata above ground), yet, by tracing them through the country some miles, I found the inclination of every bed to be nearly the same as [that of] the lias; and notwithstanding the partial and local dips of many quarries which varied from this rule, I was thoroughly satisfied by these observations that everything had a general tendency to the south-east, and thence concluded there could be none of these beds to the north-west, the truth of which conjecture was soon verified by a tour of observation through the northern parts of this kingdom.”

In March, 1798, Mr. Smith purchased a small but beautiful estate, in a deep valley, within three miles of Bath, almost overgrown with wild wood, hiding in its bosom a sheet of water and a small mill. Through this retired possession the canal was cut, without greatly injuring its remarkable beauty; and, under Mr. Smith’s fond and tasteful attention the scene was partly cleared, the pond expanded to a lake, the cottage became a comfortable home, in which he passed many happy and thoughtful hours. He did not, however, at any time reside long in this favourite retreat, but took up his station for about a year at the village of Mitford, near Bath, and engaged in the last duties which he performed as resident engineer to the Coal Canal.

Owing to a misunderstanding with the Company, this occupation ceased in June, 1799, and Mr. Smith felt and acknowledged that a new era in his life had arrived. He was not only at liberty, but placed under the necessity to consider the best means of making known his geological system, and of founding upon it a professional practice, which might provide the expense of travelling to verify and extend his knowledge, and fill up the outline of a geological map of England and Wales.

In these objects, which were ever closely associated in his own mind, he was successful; the most valuable portions of his discoveries soon became public property, and he quickly acquired extensive employment in the practical applications of these discoveries to mineral surveying and draining of land on a large scale. The extensive diffusion of his fame and opinions, which now began, was owing to no actual and authorized publication, but to continual discussions and explorations with several active friends, oral communications and exhibitions of maps at agricultural meetings (then frequent), and circulation of manuscript copies of tabular expositions of the series of strata at that time determined.

His views at this epoch appear by the following notice:—

“During my five years’ close confinement to practical engineering on the Coal Canal, my much-wished-for opportunity of collecting observations enough from the ranges of the different strata to make an accurate delineation of the stratification throughout England were suspended.

“I had seen enough by my tour of August, 1794, to satisfy myself of the practicability of doing it, and often wasted much time in poring over maps, in contriving how the ranging edges and planes of different strata could best be rendered intelligible: models were thought of, and one small map was cut along the edges of some of the strata with a view of defining their extent, and of showing how one stratum was successively covered by another.

“I drew in colours, on a map of the vicinity of Bath, and on ‘Day and Masters’ county survey,’ all [that had been observed] very accurately to a certain extent, which embraced an interesting but intricate variety of strata in hills around Bath; and some small maps of England were spoiled by speculating on the ranges of stratification without sufficient data. The intricacies in their marginal edges were such that I found, to mark point by point, as the facts were ascertained, was the only way in which I could safely proceed.

“My experience in what I had done upon the Somersetshire map was sufficient to convince me that to make a map of the strata on a scale as large as Cary’s England (five miles to an inch), with sufficient accuracy, much of it should first be drawn on a larger scale.”

It was fortunate for Mr. Smith, and for the progress of his views, that he gained at this time the friendship of a man singularly competent to estimate the truth and value of these views, and both able and willing to advocate the merit of their author. The Rev. Benjamin Richardson was at this time living in Bath, and possessed a choice collection of local fossils, mostly gathered by his own diligent hands. Extensively versed in natural history, and generally well acquainted with the progress of science, he was perfectly enthusiastic in following out, and liberal in enabling others to prosecute, new and ingenious researches, especially if they tended to practical and public good. He knew accurately the country in which Mr. Smith had principally worked, and was acquainted with the views entertained on the subject of fossils, which had been recorded in books, or were adopted by the collectors, who were even then celebrated in the vicinity of Bath. He had no knowledge of the laws of stratification and the connection between the forms of organic life and the order of superposition of the strata; while, on the other hand, his new friend had very little knowledge of the true nature of these organic forms, and their exact relation to analogous living types. The result of a meeting between two such reciprocally adjusted minds was an electric combination; the fossils which the one possessed were marshalled in the order of strata by the other, until they all found their appropriate places, and the arrangement of the cabinet became a true copy of nature.

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.

To this description of the strata was added, in the proper places, a list of the most remarkable fossils which had been gathered in the several layers of rock. The names of these fossils were principally supplied by Mr. Richardson, and are such as were then, and for a long time afterwards, familiarly employed in the many collections near Bath. Of the document thus jointly arranged each person present took a copy, under no stipulation as to the use which should be made of it, and accordingly it was extensively distributed, and remained for a long period the type and authority for the descriptions and order of superposition of the strata near Bath.

Years rolled on, and Smith’s wanderings over England and their results were laid down by him on a map, which was to be published. With regard to this map of the strata, it may be said that it was very trying work for the publisher as well as the author. The basis of the map, as already explained, was in many respects peculiar; the colouring of it was more so. Instead of the flat colouring ending in narrow defined edges usually employed for maps, Mr. Smith introduced a peculiar style of full tints for the edges of the strata, softened into the paler tint employed for the remainder of the area which they occupied on the surface. This new style of colouring gave a picturesque effect to the map, but required more than usual skill and patience to be correctly executed, and occasioned great trouble in examining the copies. The colouring of the map was thus rendered more expensive than had been anticipated, and notwithstanding the labour was well paid for, it was not always at first properly performed.

At length the difficulties inseparable from such a task were so far overcome, and this enormous labour was so far completed, that a coloured map of the strata of England and Wales was submitted to the consideration of the Society of Arts, supported by various testimonials of its general accuracy and value, in April and May, 1815. The result was the award of the premium of £50, which had been in vain offered for very many years for a work of this description—a reward which Mr. Smith might have claimed long ago, had not an honest desire to produce his work complete withheld the attempt. The map was published on the 1st of August, 1815, dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, and from that hour the fame of its author as a great original discoverer in English geology was secured. Would that this epoch of his revived and enlarged reputation had also been the dawn of more prosperous fortunes, or that, satisfied with the degree in which he had accomplished his gigantic task, he had left to others the completion of his work, and devoted himself for a time to even the humblest of those professional labours by which he had been at least supported through oppressive difficulties, and by which he must have already grown comparatively rich but for the incessant drain of money in following up discoveries which no living man could reasonably hope to complete.

Science, indeed, is a mistress whose golden smiles are not often lavished on poor and enthusiastic suitors. The time for a strenuous exertion was indeed come. Geology had kept him poor by consuming all his professional gains; the neglect of his employers too often left these unpaid; in such a condition one unfortunate step was ruin, and that step was made. On the property which he had purchased near Bath, and which he had greatly improved, he was tempted to lay a railway for bringing the freestone of Comb down to the Coal Canal, to open new quarries of this stone, and to establish new machinery for cutting and shaping it for buildings. The project, which looked well at first, failed utterly by the unexpected deficiency of the stone, on whose good quality the whole success depended. The abandonment of this cherished scheme was followed by the compulsory sale of the still more cherished property, a load of debt remained to be discharged, and the miserable effects fell heavily on others besides himself. But there were not wanting persons of station, knowledge, and humanity, who, esteeming Mr. Smith and admiring his solitary and ceaseless industry, exerted themselves to save him from the sad fate which seemed to await him.

Such things are common in the lives of men, but they are not often encountered by so resolved and patient a spirit as that of Mr. Smith. One who saw the struggle may boldly say this, because there can be no other motive for mentioning private and personal griefs but to show forth the character of the mind which could firmly bear and overcome them. As a mean of reducing his difficulties he proposed to sell that geological collection which had been so much prized, and through the assistance of some friends a communication was opened with the Treasury. Two gentlemen being deputed to examine the collection, reported favourably, and their lordships were pleased to authorize the purchase, in order that the specimens might be fitted up in the British Museum. There was also some defined notion of engaging Mr. Smith’s services at the museum to take charge of and explain the geological principles which this collection was intended to illustrate; but this project came to nothing.

In the winter of 1818-19, Mr. Smith revisited, after an absence of ten years, his native village, re-examined the unforgotten localities where in childhood his “pundibs” and “poundstones” were gathered, and collected “marlstone” fossils from an excavation at Churchill Mill, nearly at the same points where he had noticed them in 1787. In one whose life had been one long wandering, and who had earned for himself an immortal name, this return to the haunts of his childhood and the simplicity of village occupations, must have excited many interesting reflections. He had sold his patrimony, and what had been the modest dwelling of his ancestors for two hundred years; he had disbursed in travelling for what he deemed a public object all that he had earned; while one of his two brothers, quietly prosecuting trade in his native village, had grown a rich and prosperous man.

In the autumn of 1819 Mr. Smith gave up his house in London, after fifteen years’ occupation, and was compelled to submit to the sale of his furniture, collections, and books, preserving in fact, only his papers, maps, sections and other drawings, through the kindness of a most faithful friend. While this happened, he was in Yorkshire busily engaged, apparently oblivious, perhaps sternly regardless, of what seemed to others an insupportable misfortune. He deemed it an inevitable corollary to his irretrievable losses in the unlucky speculation already mentioned near Bath, and armed himself with what seemed more than fortitude to meet it.

One more used to monetary arrangements would have foreseen and averted this occurrence; but on the practical geologist the blow fell with stunning effect. He surrendered with deep regret his interest in the much-loved and really valuable little property near Bath, quitted London, and consented to have no home. From this time for seven years he became a wanderer in the north of England, rarely visiting London, except when drawn thither by the professional engagements which still, even in his loneliest retirements, were pressed upon him, and yielded him an irregular, contracted, and fluctuating income.

In the winter of 1819-20, Mr. Smith, having perhaps more than usual leisure, undertook to walk from Lincolnshire into Oxfordshire. The object proposed was to pass along a particular line through the counties of Rutland, Northampton, Bedford, and Oxford, but the ultimate destination was Swindon, in Wiltshire.

“Leaving the great road at Colsterworth, with some reflections on the birthplace of Newton,[5] we crossed in a day’s easy walk, the little county of Rutland, its hills of oolite and sand, its slopes of upper lias, and its valleys often showing marlstone, and reached the obscure village of Gretton, on the edge of Rockingham Forest. Whatever may now be the accommodations at this village, they were very wretched in 1819 (December), but the odd stories of supernatural beings and incredible frights which were narrated by the villagers assembled at the little inn, greatly amused Mr. Smith, and reminded him of exactly parallel tales which circulated around Whichwood Forest in his boyhood.

“The next morning we walked to Kettering, noticing on the road the peculiar characters of the Northamptonshire oolite. In this walk Mr. Smith had somehow sprained or over-fatigued himself, and he chose to proceed to Wellingborough in a chaise. From this point, situated on sand of the oolite series, we resumed our geological proceedings on foot, and passing by Irchester, Woolaston, and Boziate, traversed in the next hills the oolite, the forest marble, the cornbrash, and an outlier of Kelloway’s rock. The road up Boziate Hill was mantled with fossiliferous stone, some of which, obtained from the hill-top, was believed to be Kelloway’s rock, and was found to contain Ammonites sublævis and other fossils. A fine specimen of this ammonite was here laid by a particular tree on the road side, as it was large and inconvenient for the pocket, according to a custom often observed by Mr. Smith, whose memory for localities was so exact, that he has often, after many years, gone direct to some hoard of this nature, to recover his fossils. This road, however, over Boziate Hill, he was not to travel again.

“From Olney to Buckingham the route was performed in chaise. The stone dug here in clay attracted much attention, and Mr. Smith doubted whether to rank it as forest marble or cornbrash. We now crossed the oolitic country to Aynhoe, celebrated for its fossils, on foot; next day continued the walk to Deddington, Chapelhouse, and Churchill, and after a few days walked to Burford, and then travelled in the ordinary way to Swindon, Oxford, and London. In passing through Oxford, Mr. Smith, for the first time in his life, had the pleasure of seeing Professor Buckland, at the house of Mr. Bliss, the bookseller, with whom he walked over Shotover Hill, on his way toward London.”

This little tour is thus briefly narrated, because it appears in all respects a fair example of the usual way in which Mr. Smith explored the country, walking when the object he had in view required this mode of examination, travelling as fast as possible in all other cases, but always recording in note-books or on maps, the observations he made.

Up in the north of England on the east coast Smith loved to wander beneath the cliffs, noting the minutest variations in the stratification, detecting the slightest marks of dislocation, watching the peculiarities of the sea’s action on materials of unlike qualities, and inferring the causes which had anciently modified the outline of the land, and covered the low cliffs of the oolitic series with fragments of the lias from Whitby, of the coal and limestone from Teesdale or Swaledale, and of the granite and syenite from the Shap Fells and Carrock Pike. In numerous papers dedicated to the local geology of Scarborough, his reflections on these subjects are recorded; his exertions in examining one curious case of dislocation on the north side of the Castle Hill, brought on rheumatic, or rather a paralytic affection of the muscles of the lower extremities, which bound him a prisoner in bed in the early part of 1825.

Previous to this accident, he had taken part in a course of lectures to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Hull; after it had occurred, and before its effects were removed, while yet he was incapable of walking, and was actually lifted into the carriage which took him away, he accepted and executed a similar engagement proposed by the Literary and Philosophical Society of Sheffield. It was a singular spectacle, to witness the delivery of lectures which required continual reference to large maps and numerous diagrams, by a man who could not stand, but was forced to read his address from a chair, to an audience of several hundred persons in a room not very well adapted for the voice. But it was far more extraordinary to witness during all the severity of the disorder, the unpretending patience and fortitude of the sufferer, who, had he then permitted his mind to dwell too curiously on the state of his health and the state of his finances, might have added the bitter foretaste of want and privation to the actual difficulty of the moment. Such reflections and such anticipations might sadden the hearts of those who surrounded him, but Mr. Smith would have thought it unworthy of his resolved mind and firm trust in Providence, to have abated one jot of his accustomed cheerfulness, shortened one of the innumerable playful stories which were always springing to his lips from the rich treasure-house of his memory, or turned his meditations from his favourite subjects.

At Sheffield, while slowly recovering the use of his limbs, he busied himself in arranging a body of information which he had gathered concerning the neighbouring coal districts; and on removing soon afterwards to his old quarters at Doncaster, he worked much on the large “Old Survey of Yorkshire,” thinking to complete the colouring of it. By degrees he recovered entirely from his painful disorder, and from this year (1825) to 1839, nothing of the kind ever affected him again.

But these years were fruitful of events interesting to the friends of William Smith. In February, 1831, the Council of the Geological Society of London honoured him by awarding to him the first Wollaston medal; and the terms with which the gift was accompanied render this act on the part of the society and the president extremely memorable. Dr. Wollaston’s services to physical science were well known and duly honoured in his lifetime; geology has felt, and will long feel the benefit of his dying bequest. He invested one thousand pounds in the three per cent. Reduced Bank Annuities, in the joint names of himself and the Geological Society, and directed that after his decease, “the society should apply the dividends in promoting researches concerning the mineral structure of the earth, or in rewarding those by whom such researches should hereafter be made; or in such manner as should appear to the Council of the said society for the time being, conducive to the interests of the society in particular, or the science of geology in general.” He afterwards enjoined the society “not to hoard the dividends parsimoniously, but to expend them liberally, and, as far as might be, annually, in furthering the objects of the trust.” The first year’s income from this fund was appropriated to the acquisition of a die for a medal bearing the head of Dr. Wollaston, and this having been undertaken by Mr. Wyon, the society was prepared in 1831 to fulfil the trust with which they were charged. The council accordingly passed unanimously the following resolutions, Jan. 11, 1831:—

“1. That a medal of fine gold, bearing the impress of the head of Dr. Wollaston, and not exceeding the value of ten guineas, be procured with the least possible delay.

“2. That the first Wollaston medal be given to Mr. William Smith, in consideration of his being a great original discoverer in English geology; and especially for his having been the first, in this country, to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and to determine their succession by means of their imbedded fossils.”

The announcement of this award was made by a congenial spirit. The chair of the Geological Society was then filled by one of its most honoured members, an original thinker and faithful observer, well qualified to appreciate the originality of Mr. Smith’s discoveries, and well acquainted by actual research with their extent and their value. In his address on this occasion, Professor Sedgwick, speaking in the name of the Geological Society, sketched a brief but satisfactory history of Mr. Smith’s career, demonstrated the entire justice of the award of the Council of the Geological Society, and added his personal testimony in favour of Mr. Smith’s claims in terms of no ordinary value.

“I for one can speak with gratitude of the practical lessons I have received from Mr. Smith. It was by tracking his footsteps, with his maps in my hand, through Wiltshire and the neighbouring counties, where he had trodden nearly thirty years before, that I first learned the subdivisions of our oolitic series, and apprehended the meaning of those arbitrary and somewhat uncouth terms, which we derive from him as our master, which have long become engrafted into the conventional language of English geologists, and through their influence have been, in part, also adopted by the naturalists of the continent.

“After such a statement, gentlemen, I have a right to speak boldly, and to demand your approbation of the council’s award. I could almost dare to wish that stern lover of truth, to whose bounty we owe the “Donation Fund,” that dark eye, before the glance of which all false pretensions withered, were once more amongst us. And if it be denied us to hope that a spirit like that of Wollaston should often be embodied on the earth, I would appeal to those intelligent men who form the strength and ornament of this society, whether there was any place for doubt or hesitation? whether we were not compelled, by every motive which the judgment can approve and the heart can sanction, to perform this act of filial duty, before we thought of the claims of any other man, and to place our first honour on the brow of the father of English geology?

“If, in the pride of our present strength, we were disposed to forget our origin, our very speech bewrays us: for we use the language which he taught us in the infancy of our science. If we, by our united efforts, are chiselling the ornaments and slowly raising up the pinnacles of one of the temples of nature, it was he who gave the plan, and laid the foundations, and erected a portion of the solid walls by the unassisted labour of his hands.

“The men who have led the way in useful discoveries, have ever held the first place of honour in the estimation of all who in after times have understood their works or trodden in their steps. It is upon this abiding principle that we have acted; and in awarding our first prize to Mr. Smith, we believe that we have done honour to our own body, and are sanctioned by the highest feelings which bind societies together.

“I think it a high privilege to fill this chair on an occasion when we met, not coldly to deliberate on the balance of conflicting claims, in which, after all, we might go wrong, and give the prize to one man by injustice to another; but to perform a sacred duty, where there is no room for doubt or error, and to perform an act of public gratitude, in which the judgment and the feelings are united.”[6]

On this occasion Mr. Smith presented to the society the original Table of Stratification drawn in 1799, and a circle-map of the vicinity of Bath, which had been geologically coloured about the same period.

The British Association, founded at York in 1831, held its second meeting at Oxford in June, 1832; and on this occasion the Wollaston Medal, awarded in the previous year, was put in Mr. Smith’s possession; and he was further gratified by the announcement that a pension of one hundred pounds, solicited by the united voice of English geologists, had been assigned him by the Government of His Majesty William the Fourth.

The meeting of the British Association was this year (1839) appointed to be held at Birmingham, on the 26th of August, and Mr. Smith received from Mr. Joseph Hodgson (one of the secretaries of the meeting) a special and very cordial invitation to be present. He stopped on his journey to Birmingham, at the house of friends at Northampton. Here the kindest welcome awaited him; and in addition to the pleasure of contemplating the beautiful series of Northamptonshire fossils which had been collected, he was gratified by several excursions into the neighbouring country, which had always been interesting to him since, in earlier days, he had opened the curious volume of Morton’s “Northamptonshire.” While thus tracing the boundaries of the minor divisions of the oolitic rocks which he had been the first to distinguish, a slight cold by which he was affected seemed to the eyes of his friends, to deserve more attention than he bestowed on it; medical assistance became immediately advisable. William Smith had for many years been successful in guarding his own usually robust health, and he was slow and reluctant to admit of advice better suited to the disorder which now attacked him, and which on a former occasion had so prostrated his strength that he recovered with difficulty. He began to feel the attack serious, and to perceive the alarm in the faces of his friends.

It was difficult to believe, that under that calm, thoughtful, and pleased expression of countenance, those animated descriptions of the country which he had visited a few days previously, those plans of further and strenuous exertion, which asked years of active life for completion, lurked pain and fatal disease. At first it seemed as if the remedies applied were producing beneficial effects, but this hope failed; the uncomplaining sufferer sank continually in each succeeding hour, till his eyes lost their bright and kindly light and the ever-varying features became fixed in serene and awful tranquility (Aug. 28, 1839).

His life, written by his distinguished relation the late Professor John Phillips, F.R.S. of Oxford, has been the source of these pages. William Smith’s portrait hangs in the most distinguished position, over the president’s chair at the Geological Society of London. He was a great genius, and suffered much toil and poverty, in order to produce the truth; but he led a very happy life on the whole for his thoughts about nature were his great and good riches. He proved that there is a regular succession of strata which are characterized by their fossils, each stratum being the burial ground of its time of collection.