DEATH OF DR. SMITH. 515 



SHORT COMMUNICATIONS. 



Extract of a Letter from George Baker, Esq. referring to 

 the death of Dr. William Smith. — "My sister and I had 

 long looked forward with pleasure to attending the meeting 

 of the British Association at Birmingham; — we had antici 

 pated finding many of our distant friends there, — and what 

 added still more to our promised enjoyment, Dr. Smith wrote 

 to say he would come and geologize in our neighbourhood 

 with us for a few days, on his way to Birmingham. 



" He came to us from London on the Tuesday before the 

 meeting He seemed slightly indisposed with a cold, but we 

 drove about thirty miles the next day in a direction suggested 

 by himself, to examine a point of doubtful stratification. On 

 Thursday he walked with us nearly two miles, to see some 

 fossil bones. On Friday a bilious diarrhoea came on, and 

 much against his inclination I consulted my friend Dr. Ro- 

 bertson, who hoped he would be sufficiently well to accom- 

 pany us to Birmingham on Monday. He went a short drive 

 with us that evening, and even on Monday morning, the attack 

 having subsided, we thought he would be able to go with us 

 by the rail-road ; but when he came down stairs (for he had 

 not been confined to his bed) he was evidently too weak to 

 bear the journey, and we began to be alarmed. I went im- 

 mediately to Birmingham for his nephew, Professor Phillips, 

 and returned with him early the next morning, when the Doc- 

 tor appeared so comfortable, and gave us such a circumstan- 

 tial and connected account of his movements, and the geolo- 

 gical observations he had made during his visits since the 

 Oxford agricultural meeting, that Professor Phillips thought 

 we were needlessly alarmed, and that he might venture to re- 

 turn to Birmingham in the afternoon. But when we went up 

 again after breakfast, an evident and rapid change had taken 

 place ; he was in a state of drowsy torpor, from which (al- 

 though, if roused, he answered questions rationally to the last) 

 he never rallied. The powers of nature were exhausted, and 

 he kept gradually (or rather rapidly) sinking till the following 

 night (Wednesday), when he breathed his last without a sigh 

 or a groan. From the first moment of his attack he suffered 

 no pain, and his constant reply to every inquiry if he felt any 

 pain, was " None at all." The comparative suddenness of his 

 death was a great shock to us, and it seems even now like a 

 dream. May we realise it by attending to its awful warning, 

 " be ye also ready." 



* He often expressed a wish that as his geological research- 



