202 JAMES SMITHSON AND HIS BEQUEST. 



forte de la justesse de l'idee, ce qui me fait esperer qu'aucun mineralo- 

 giste, au courant de l'etat actuel de la chiuiie, ne conservera des doutes."* 



Berzelius gives in his "Systematic enumeration of minerals": u Zi>w 

 carbonate. ZnO^. Smithson, Phil. Trans., 1803, 17-"+ 



Under Zinc calamine, lie says : 



" Nous devorts la connaissance de la composition, taut des carbonates 

 que du silicate del'oxidede zinc, a un excellent travail de M. Smithson, 

 iusere dans les Transact, pb.il., 1803."$ 



NOTE 7. 



EXTRACTS FROM SMITHSON'S WRITINGS. 



Tbe following extracts from Smitbson's papers illustrate bis breadth 

 of view and style of composition : 



"A knowledge of tbe productions of art, and of its operations, is in- 

 dispensable to the geologist. Bold is tbe man who undertakes to assign 

 effects to agents with which he has no acquaintance, which he never has 

 beheld in action, to whose indisputable results he is an utter stranger, 

 who engages in the fabrication of a world, alike unskilled in the forces 

 and the materials which he employs." § 



" More than commonly incurious must he be who would not find delight 

 in stemming the stream of ages, returning to times long past, and behold- 

 ing the then existing state of things and of men. In the arts of an an- 

 cient people much may be seen concerning them, the progress they had 

 made in knowledge of various kinds, their habits, and their ideas on 

 many subjects. And products of skill may likewise occur, either wholly 

 unknown to us, or superior to those which now supply them.jl 



"A want of due conviction that the materials of the globe and the prod- 

 ucts of the laboratory are the same, that what nature affords spontane- 

 ously to men, and what the art of the chemist prepares, differ no ways 

 but in the sources from whence they are derived, has given to the in- 

 dustry of the collector of mineral bodies an erroneous direction. 3 fl 



" No observer of tbe earth can doubt that it has undergone very con- 

 siderable changes. Its strata are every where broken and disordered, and 

 in many of them are inclosed the remains of innumerable beings which 

 once had life, and these beings appear to have been strangers to the 

 climates in which their remains now exist. In a book held by a large 

 portion of mankind to have been written from divine inspiration, an uni- 

 versal deluge is recorded. It was natural for the believers in this del- 

 uge to refer to its action all or many of the phenomena in question, 

 and the more so as they seemed to find in them a corroboration of the 

 event. Accordingly, this is what was done as soon as any desire to ac- 

 count for these appearances on the earth became felt. The success, 

 however, was not such as to obtain the general assent of the learned; 

 and the attempt fell into neglect and oblivion. . . . 



* Nouveau systhme <l< min6ralogie, pai J. .J. Berzelius, I'ari.s, L819, p. 23. 



t Same work ; p. 205. 



X Same work ; p. 255. 



$ On a lilimus metallic copper. Smithsonian Miscell. Coll.. No. :!"-27, p. TO. 



|| An examination of some Egyptian colors. Smithsonian Miscell. Coll.,Ho. 327, p. 101. 



II On some compounds of Fluorine. Smithsonian Miscell. Coll., No. 327, p. 94. 



