PROrOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON's BEQUEST, 867 



You have asked me, -to tell you any particulars in refer- 

 ence to his philosophical or other opinions. That he was a 

 man of much acumen in these matters, a paper read before 

 the Society in 1813 may serve to show. It is stated, that 

 when he was in Italy in 1794, a substance that had been 

 ejected from Vesuvius was given to him for examination, 

 and he ascertained, after some trials, that it consisted 

 chiefly of sulphate of potash ; on re-examining it with 

 more accuracy, he determined it to be a very complex saline 

 compound. By way of introduction to his paper, he gives 

 a view of his ideas about the origin of the earth. In his 

 opinion, it was either a sun or a comet, and was brought 

 into the state in which it now is, by undergoing combustion 

 on its surface. The volcanoes are relics of this original 

 combustion, and the materials were the metallic bases of 

 which the primitive strata are composed. As a proof that 

 these primitive strata have been formed by combustion, he 

 mentions that " garnets, hornblende, and other Crystals 

 found in them, contain no water; and that little or no 

 water is to be found in the primitive strata themselves." 

 This paper is in the Transactions for 1813. 



So you see, he had come, by chemical reasoning, to a 

 conclusion similar to that which Fourier was contempora- 

 neously publishing in France, as the result of mathematical 

 investigation, that the earth is nothing more than an en- 

 crusted star. 



Sometime after this, he commenced an investigation into 

 the nature of the colors of vegetables and insects; he no- 

 ticed that the red color of flowers, is occasionally produced 

 by the union of carbonic acid with a blue substance. 



In a letter written at Kome, in 1819, and which was pub- 

 lished in the Annals of Philosophy the 'same year, respect- 

 ing a remarkable mineral of lead, he makes allusion to one 

 of the ablest of his contemporary chemists : " The first 

 discovery of the composition of this singular substance 

 belongs, however, to my illustrious and unfortunate friend, 

 and indeed distant relative, the late Smithson Tennant." 

 This gentleman was professor of Chemistry in the Univer- 

 sity of Cambridge — he was the so*i of a Yorkshire clergy- 

 man — was early in life deprived of his father; his mother 

 was killed by being thrown from her horse, whilst riding 

 beside him. lie himself, by a similar accident, had his 

 collar-bone broken, many years after; and by a third re- 

 markable coincidence, lost his life. But the story is singu- 

 lar — I will tell it you. 



Mr. Tennant and Baron Bulow, a German officer, after the 



