THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 291 



ried, and for family reasons preferred to live on the Continent, 

 spending most of his time in France, Italy, and Germany ; in his 

 constant journeys he made observations on the climate, physical 

 features, geology, and industries of the regions visited. He formed 

 collections of minerals, and, for convenience of analyzing them, 

 traveled with a portable chemical laboratory. 



Living on the Continent, he acquired a cosmopolitan character, 

 and formed acquaintance with the leading savants of the time ; 

 among his friends and corrrespondents were Gay-Lussac, the 

 chemist ; Haiiy, the mineralogist ; Arago, the astronomer ; Biot, 

 the physicist, of France ; Berzelius, the chemist, of Sweden ; and 

 Davy, Black, Wollaston, Cavendish, Thomson, Smithson Tennant, 

 chemical philosophers, of England. If it is " by a man's position 

 among his contemporaries and competitors that his work may 

 most justly be appraised," Smithson's scientific attainments must 

 be rated very highly. 



Between the years 1791 and 1825 Smithson published twenty- 

 seven scientific papers, of which eight appeared in the Philosoph- 

 ical Transactions of the Royal Society and nineteen in Thomson's 

 Annals of Philosophy. These memoirs embrace a wide range of 

 research : the first deals with the curious deposit in bamboo called 

 tabasheer, which he proved to be " siliceous earth " ; the second 

 was a " Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," in which he estab- 

 lished a new mineral species, afterward named smithsonite by 

 Beudant (1832). The larger number of his papers deal with 

 chemistry applied to mineral analysis, but he also discussed the 

 nature of vegetables and insects, the origin of the earth, the crystal- 

 line form of ice, and an improved method of making coffee. An 

 examination of these contributions to knowledge shows that he was 

 no mere dilettante in science, and that he carried on his researches 

 in a philosophic spirit for the sake of truth ; all his writings ex- 

 hibit keen perception, concise language, and accurate expression. 



Of Smithson's personal traits and social character very little is 

 known ; his dislike of publicity, his natural reserve, as well as 

 his residence in foreign countries, separated him from friends 

 who might have given us particulars. It is said that he fre- 

 quently narrated an anecdote of himself which illustrated his re- 

 markable skill in analyzing minute quantities of substances, an 

 ability which rivaled that of Dr. Wollaston. Happening to ob- 

 serve a tear gliding down a lady's cheek, he endeavored to catch 

 it on a crystal vessel ; one half the tear-drop escaped, but he sub- 

 jected the other half to reagents, and detected what was then 

 called microcosmic salt, muriate of soda, and some other saline 

 constituents held in solution. 



James Smithson died at the age of sixty-four years, on the 27th 

 of June, 1829, at Genoa, Italy, and was buried in the Protestant 



