530 Geological Society : — Anniversary Address. 



the hot springs at Bath. In 1821. he recommended to Col. Braddyl 

 to search for coal (beneath the magnesian limestone) on an estate 

 in which is now situated the great South Hetton Colliery. No 

 colliery in Northumberland had been worked, at that time, under 

 the magnesian limestone. 



Mr. Smith's principles of drainage have been applied with much 

 advantage near Bath, Woburn, and in Norfolk. Finding the town 

 of Scarborough to be very ill supplied with water, he excavated 

 in the interior of the hill of Falsgrave Moor, two or three miles 

 distant, a subterranean reservoir, in which he collected, from 

 streamlets percolating that hill, sufficient water for the permanent 

 supply of the town*. 



From his early days to the latest period of his life he tells us that 

 he had the habit of looking on the ground f. 



Mr. Smith's last public employment was in conjunction with Mr. 

 De la Beche and Mr. Barry, in the Commission for reporting on the 

 best building-stone for the new House of Commons J. During the 

 later years of his life he resided near Scarborough superintending 

 the estates of Sir John Johnson at Hackness ; and dying at North- 

 ampton, in August 1839, aged seventy-one, after a few days' ill- 

 ness, at the house of his friend Mr. Baker, the historian of North- 

 amptonshire, on his way to the Meeting of the British Association 

 at Birmingham, was interred in the church-yard near the west end 

 of the beautiful Norman church of St. Peter, in Northampton, which 

 stands on the Oolite formation. He had often expressed a wish to 

 be buried in this formation, on which he was born and educated, 

 and the history of which he had so much elucidated. A monument 

 will be erected to his memory in St. Peter's Church by subscription 

 of members of the Geological Society of London. 



It was not the least of the services which have been rendered to 

 our science by Mr. Smith, that he was during many years the 

 geological preceptor of his accomplished nephew Mr. John Phillips, 

 in whom he has bequeathed to us a pupil, who has shown, by pub- 

 lications of the highest order in various departments of Geology, 

 the soundness of the instructions received from his affectionate uncle. 



Mr. Da vies Gilbert was one of the earliest members elected 

 into this Society, at its formation in 1808. During two years he 

 served as a Vice-President, and for six years was a member of our 



* An account of this curious work is published by himself in the Phi- 

 losophical Magazine for June 1827- 



f See a paper by himself on Quartz in Soils, published in Charlesworth's 

 Magazine for July 1837. 



I For more detailed accounts of the life of Mr. Smith, and of the amount 

 and value of the services he rendered to Geology in England, I must 

 refer to Dr. Fitton's masterly and candid investigation of this question in 

 the Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXIX, p. 310, &c. [reprinted, with additions, 

 in L. & E. Phil. Mag., vol. i. p. 147, &c] ; to Mr. Conybeare's Introduction 

 to his Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, 1822, p. 45 ; to the 

 Address of Professor Sedgwick to this Society, 1831 ; and to a biographical 

 notice by his nephew Professor John Phillips, in Charlesworth's Magazine 

 of Natural History, New Series, 1839, p. 213. 





