Deceased Members — Dr.W. Smith. 527 



of Arts awarded him their medal and a premium of £50. In the 

 same year also his stratigraphical collection of organic remains was 

 purchased for the British Museum ; this collection having formed 

 the basis of his two separate volumes, entitled " Strata identified 

 by their Organized Fossils," 1815, and " a Stratigraphical System of 

 Organized Fossils," 4to, 1817. 



During the six years which followed the publication of his map 

 of England, he put forth twenty geological maps of English coun- 

 ties on a larger scale, and several coloured sections across the south 

 of England, and a general Geological Section of England and 

 Wales, from London to Snowdon. 



Among his unpublished papers were found unfinished and in 

 part printed, an introductory work on geology, and preparations 

 for a volume on CEconomic Geology, both illustrating the original- 

 ity of his views. 



Mr. William Smith entered on the field of his honourable ex- 

 ertions as a Civil Engineer and Mineral Surveyor at a time when 

 his labours in geology were but little appreciated, and almost solitary. 

 Amidst difficulties and discouragements, and at intervals snatched 

 from the duties of a laborious profession, he accomplished the gi- 

 gantic work of a general mineralogical survey of England, founded 

 almost entirely on his own personal observations, which he ulti- 

 mately recorded in a map of fifteen coloured sheets, published by 

 subscription in 1815. 



Inevitable delays retarded the appearance of this work nearly to 

 the time when a more detailed and perfect map, by a distinguished 

 president of this Society, eclipsed in some degree the fame which 

 would have accrued to its author had it been published earlier, 

 even in the less perfect form to which he had advanced it some 

 years before. The sense entertained by this Society of the value 

 of the scientific services of Mr. Smith, was marked by their award 

 to him of their first Wollaston Medal, in 1831 ; and was accom- 

 panied by the just and eloquent eulogium pronounced on that oc- 

 casion by Professor Sedgwick. In the same year also the British 

 Association assembled at York made successful application to go- 

 vernment for a pension, which was settled upon Mr. Smith for life ; 

 and at the meeting of this Association at Dublin, 1835, the Univer- 

 sity conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. 



Mr. Smith was one of those remarkable persons whom strong 

 natural sense and acute powers of observation occasionally enable 

 to triumph over the disadvantages of a defective education. His 

 attention was first called to physical inquiries, by the observing, when 

 a boy, that a large stone which he was lifting under water in search 

 of eels, could be moved with much more ease, than if the same 

 stone had been on land. His juvenile curiosity was excited to learn 

 the cause of an occurrence so surprising to him ; and this first 

 step led him, at the age of eighteen, to enter the profession of a 

 surveyor and civil engineer. His early professional occupations 

 from the year 1791 to 1799, whilst surveying collieries, constructing 

 a part of the Somerset coal canal near Bath, and preparing reports 



