23 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



ginal discoverer was now secured. Geology had 

 kept him poor by consuming all his patrimony as 

 well as his professional gains. The neglect of his 

 employers too often left these unpaid, and an un- 

 fortunate enterprise completed his ruin. On a 

 small property, beautifully situated near Bath, 

 which he had purchased and greatly improved, he 

 was tempted to lay a railway, for the purpose of 

 bringing the freestone of Combe down to the coal 

 canal, and to open new quarries in this stone. But 

 the continuity of the bed was broken, by an undis- 

 covered fault. The supply failed, on which the suc- 

 cess of the whole enterprise depended ; a load of 

 debt remained to be discharged, and the disaster fell 

 heavily on others besides himself. As one means 

 of reducing his difficulties he proposed to sell 

 his much-prized geological collection of fossils. 

 Through some friends a negociation was opened 

 with the Treasury. The collection was purchased 

 for the sum of £500, to which £100 was added in 

 1818 for an additional series obtained from North 

 Wilts and Essex. The whole sum thus received 

 from the Government amounted to £900 : the 

 number of species was supposed to be 695 ; the 

 number of specimens 2,657. The collection, which 

 being arranged upon a peculiar plan of Smith's, 

 on sloping shelves, to represent the strata in 

 which they were found, could not well be brought 

 into unison with the rest of the series of objects 

 open to the public, was transferred first to one 

 department of the British Musuem, and then 

 to another; and the present state of this, the first 

 stratigraphical collection ever made, is unknown. 

 If in existence, it might surely be transferred to 

 some local museum, where it would be of inestima- 

 ble value ; and where could it find a more appro- 

 priate resting-place than in some of those counties 

 most intimately associated with Smith's profes- 

 sional labours ? 



In 1817 a portion of the descriptive catalogue 

 of this collection was published, and in the 

 same year was issued the first number of another 

 work called " Strata identified by Organic Fos- 

 sils." It consisted of numerous figures of fossils, 

 engraved by Sowerby. But the expenses of 

 this work left to the author very little profit, and it 

 was soon discontinued. 



At the same time commenced the publication, 

 by Carey, of a large series of county maps and 

 sections, on the same plan as that of England and 

 Wales, but carried out to greater minuteness than 

 in the larger work. 



From this time to 1818, Smith continued to pur- 

 sue his professioal labours in Norfolk, where he 

 had previously acquired high reputation by his 

 skill in land-draining, and the construction of 

 water meadows, and by the exclusion of the sea 



from the marshes bordering the estuary of the Yare 

 andWaveney, in Norfolk and Suftblk. Forty thou- 

 sand acres of valuable land had been for two years 

 under water, and the commissioners and their en- 

 gineers were vainly endeavouring to stop the breach 

 with timber and masonry, which by the abrupt 

 opposition which they offered only increased the 

 violence of the breaches. With some difficulty 

 Smith obtained leave to follow his own plan, which 

 was to stop the breach with sand disposed with 

 such a gradual slope as he had observed it to as- 

 sume on the shore, from the action of the breaches, 

 and he sealed down the sand with gravel. The 

 plan v.'as entirely successful, and in less than a year 

 the breach, more than a mile in length, was closed, 

 and the engines at work to relieve the land from 

 water. 



Smith had now long been known as a success- 

 ful mining and draining engineer. He had esta- 

 blished a lucrative practice, and had spent the 

 proceeds of it, together with his small patrimony, 

 in the accomplishment of that which should have 

 been public work. Scientific honours now awaited 

 him. 



In 1818 Dr. Fitton, in his Notes on the Progress 

 of English Geology, asserted Smith's claims to the 

 claim of an original discovt^r, and it was the favour- 

 able light in which they were placed in this work, 

 that led to the subsequent recognition by the Geo- 

 logical Society, who had previously kept aloof from 

 him, and he from them. In the mean time his 

 pecuniary difficulties were fast closing around him. 

 The unfortunate speculation in which he had 

 engaged, in connexion with the estate which 

 he had bought near Bath, and greatly improved, 

 completed his ruin. He gave up his house in 

 London, was obliged to submit to tha forced sale 

 of that little property, together with his books, 

 only preserving his manuscripts through the kind- 

 ness of a friend. He now for several years became 

 a houseless wanderer, chiefly in the counties of 

 Yorkshire and Westmoreland, deriving a preca- 

 rious subsistence from such professional occupa- 

 tions as still sought him in his retirement. 



During this time he completed a geological map 

 of Yorkshire, aided by his nephew. Professor 

 Phillips. It was during 'this period, while occu- 

 pied with a professional engagement with Colonel 

 Braddyl, he persuaded that gentleman to sink for 

 coal through the magnesian limestone, in opposi- 

 tion to the practical] opinions of the most eminent 

 coal-viewers of the district. The result was the 

 valuable South Hetton Colliery. During this period 

 an urgent official application was made by the 

 Russian Government for his services as a mining 

 engineer in that country, which he would probably 

 have accepted if the seclusion in which he lived 



