€0 JAMES 8MITHS0N AND HIS BEQUEST. 



forte de la justesse de Vid^e, ce qui me fait esp6rer qu'auoun inin6ralo- 

 ^iste, au couraut de P^tat actuel de la chimie, ne conservera dee doutes."* 



Berzeliua gives ia his "Systematic euumeration of minerals": ^^Zinc 

 carbonate. ZnO^. Smithson, Phil. Trans., 1803, 17."t 



Under Zinc calamine, he says : 



" Nous devous la connaissance de la composition, tant des carbonates 

 que du silicate de I'oxide de zinc, ti. un excellent travail de M. Smithson, 

 ins6r6 dans les Transact, phil., 1803."J 



NOTE 7. 



EXTRACTS FROM SMITHSON'S WRITINGS. 



The following extracts from Smithson's papers illustrate his breadfh 

 of view and style of composition : 



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

 •dispensable to the geologist. Bold is the 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 au utter stranger, 

 "Who engages in the fabrication of a world, alike unskilled in the forces 

 ^nd 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 sui)ply them.|| 



<'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 s|)ontane- 

 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." fl 



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

 siderable changes. Its strata are everywhere 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 

 *vent. 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 j 

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



* Nouveau ayatdme de min4valogie, par J. J. Berzelius, Paris, 1819, p. 23. 



t Same work ; p. 205. , 



X Same work ; p. 255. 



$ Ou a libroiiu metallic copper. Smithaonian Miacvll. Coll., No. ;J27, p. 70. 



II Au examiuation of aomo Egyptlau colors. SiuitltHonian Miaccll. Co/i., No. 'Mi7, p. lOl. 



if On some compouuds of Fluoriue. Smithaonian Miacell. Coll., No. 327, p. 94. 



