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practical skill, has been appreciated as a gift to the commonwealth of 

 nations by other countries than our own. It is adopted by the United 

 States Navy Department, and it has been translated into Russian, Ger- 

 man, Portuguese, and French. Smith's mathematical work, and particu- 

 larly his beautiful and ingenious geometrical constructions, have attracted 

 great interest, and have called forth fresh investigation in the same 

 direction, among the well-instructed and able mathematicans of the 

 American, Russian, French, and German Navy Departments. 



The laborious and persevering devotion to the compass problem, 

 which has been shown by British mathematicians and practical men, by 

 Sabine, Scoresby, Airy, Archibald Smith, by Captains Johnson and Evans 

 of the Compass Department of the Admiralty, and by Townsou and 

 Rundell, who acted as secretaries to the Liverpool Compass Committee, 

 has been an honour to the British nation in the eyes of the world. 

 Referring particularly to the Liverpool Compass Committee, Lieut. 

 Collet, of the French Navy, the French translator of the ' Admiralty 

 Manual,' in a history of the subject which he prefixes to his translation, 

 says : '" Aide par des liberalites particulieres, soutenu surtout par 

 " cette sorte de tenacite passiomiee, tout particuliere a la nation anglaise, 

 " qui, en inspirant les longues et patieutes recherches conduit surement 

 " au succes et sans laquelle tons les moyens d'action soiit impuissants a 

 " surmonter les obstacles, ce Comite fit paraitre successivement trois rap- 

 " ports qui fixerent d'une maniere definitive la plupart des questions con- 

 "troversees, et qui indiquerent nettement, pour celles qui restaient a 

 " resoudre, la marche qu'il fallait suivre et les veritables inconnues du 

 " probleme." And in an official publication by the American Navy 

 Department, containing an English translation of Poissoii's memoir, 

 followed by the whole series of papers, theoretical and practical, on ships' 

 magnetism, which have appeared in this country, we find the following 

 passage, which must be gratifying to all who feel British scientific work 

 and appreciation of it by other nations, to be a proper subject for national 

 pride : " * * With the complex conditions thus introduced, and the 

 " more exacting requirements of experience in their practical treatment, 

 " came the necessity for constantly aiming at that complete analysis of 

 " the magnetic phenomena of the ship which has been so prominent and 

 " characteristic a feature of the English researches." 



The constancy to the compass problem in which Smith persevered with 

 a rare extreme of disinterestedness, from the time when Sabine first 

 asked him to work out practical methods from Poissoii's mathematical 

 theory, until his health broke down two years before his death, was cha- 

 racteristic of the man. It was pervaded by that " tenacite passionnee " 

 which the generous French appreciation, quoted above, describes as a 

 peculiarity of the English nation ; but there was in it also a noble single- 

 mindedness and a purity of unselfishness to be found in few men of any 

 nation, but simply natural in Archibald Smith. 



