98 Trof. Judd — The Earliest Engraved Geological Maps. 



and width of each stratiiui on the surface, accompanied by a general 

 section, showing their proportion, dip, and direction ; the map and 

 sections, to mal^e them more striking and just representations of 

 nature, will be all given in the proper colours." Smith's friend 

 Eichai'dson urged that a Latin edition of the book should be issued 

 with the English one, and it is certain that if this had been done, 

 all possibility of contesting Smith's claim to priority would have 

 been destroyed. 



Unfortunately, however, the failure of the publisher Debrett, and 

 the limited means and numerous business avocations of William 

 Smith, prevented the realization of these projects. Thanks, however, 

 to the splendid loyalty of Smith's numerous friends — especially 

 Eichardson, Townsend, and Farey — there exists such a body of 

 evidence concerning Smith's discoveries and teaching, all published 

 between the years 1801 and 1815, that no impartial judge can for 

 one moment hesitate in assigning to Smith that priority so 

 strenuously claimed for him by Fitton, Farey, Sedgwick, and 

 Phillips. 



Nor can it be justly asserted that the treatment of Smith by his 

 contemporaries was other than generous and forbearing. In 1802 

 prizes of fifty guineas were offered by the Society of Arts for 

 " mineralogical maps of either England, Scotland, or Ireland, on 

 a scale of not less than 15 miles to the inch," and the offer was 

 renewed year by year down to 1814, when the prize for the English 

 Map was claimed by and awarded to William Smith. As Phillips 

 remarked : " At this moment, any map, however crude and incorrect, 

 professing to be a mineralogical map of a part of the British Islands, 

 would have been a source of lasting reputation to its editor ; any 

 account of the principal facts then ascertained near Bath would have 

 been welcomed with admiration. Had Mr. Smith been exposed to 

 this ungenerous rivalry, he must have sunk under the grief and 

 vexation of being anticipated in his map by some inferior com- 

 pilation, and in his other labours by notices which, in consequence 

 of his wandering habits and laborious profession, it would have 

 been more easy for others than himself to have drawn up. But 

 nothing of this kind happened." 



That a knowledge of William Smith's ideas and discoveries had 

 by this time become very widely diffused, not only in this country, 

 but all over Eui-ope, and even in America, there is abundant evidence. 

 Manuscript copies of his original table of strata with their fossils had 

 been widely circulated, and every facility had been given to those 

 interested in the subject to make transcripts of the maps which were 

 so freely exhibited by their author. At agricultural meetings of all 

 kinds Smith was a constant attendant, exhibiting and lending bis 

 maps for inspection ; while reports of his explanations of maps and 

 sections not unfrequently found their way into the newspapers. At 

 Trim Street in Bath, in the year 1802, and a little later near Charing 

 Cross, London (Craven Street), a collection of maps and sections, 

 with an illustrative series of fossils, was arranged, and exhibited 

 freely to all who chose to call. This collection of fossils, which 



