OF JAMES SMITHSON. 155 



I have thus attempted to indicate the salient parts of 

 Smithson's scientific achievement. More interesting than 

 the work, however, is the worker. He was eminently an 

 experimenter. All through his papers he is found dili- 

 gently collecting facts before he proceeds to theorize. This 

 is well shown in his very first paper, that on the so-called 

 Tabasheer. Perhaps the most finished of his papers is that 

 " On a Fibrous Metallic Copper," combining, as it does, an 

 ingenious explanation of a singular phenomenon and sub- 

 sequent confirmatory experiments. 



His style, so clear, so direct, and so exact, is a model for 

 scientific purposes. Of this the extracts above given are good 

 specimens. The paper just referred to, on fibrous copper, 

 and that that on native minium are others. 



Of his neatness as a manipulator and skill in devising ap- 

 paratus I have already spoken. 



The papers on " Improvements of Lamps" and an " Im- 

 proved Method of Making Coffee " show his practical turn. 



It is in the last paper but one of the book relative 'to the 

 " Formation of Kirkdale Cave," that we, perhaps, best of all 

 discover the true fibre of Smithson's mind. The paper was 

 a refutation of the idea of the Rdiquice Diluviance, which 

 attempted to refer this cave and some bones found in it to 

 the flood of Genesis. Srnithson discusses the subject with the 

 greatest cogency, showing the utter failure of the theory to 

 account for the facts. His argument is of the greatest per- 

 spicuity and justness, so correctly does he apprehend every 

 point. This discussion has, of course, lost all its interest at 

 this day, but it had not then, when geology was so imper- 

 fectly known. In the last section of this paper the subject 

 is the Deluge, and the effects which must have followed. 

 With real eloquence he shows that, if the secondary lime- 

 stones were formed during the flood, "embalmed cities, with 

 their monuments " would be found in " every limestone 

 quarry." Such antiquities as these being wholly unknown, 

 he concludes that the removal of the effects of the deluge, 

 like the deluge itself, was due to supernatural causes. 



u Toa miracle, then," he says, " which swept away all 

 that could recall that day of death, when 'the windows of 

 heaven were opened' upon mankind, must we refer what 

 no natural means are adequate to^explain. For this stupen- 

 pendous prodigy, 



" Like the baseless fabric of a vision, 

 Left not a wreck behind." 



