WILLIAM SMITH I HIS MAPS AND MEMOIRS 
207 
acquire useful knowledge. He gave, at some length,* an account of the 
progress of his discoveries ; the origin of which he dated about forty 
years ago, when he was employed in superintending canals and coal 
mines, and in surveying land, in the west of England ; and concluded 
by returning thanks for the honour the company had done him." 
MEMOKIALS, Etc. 
A bust surmounts a tablet to Smith's memory " within the 
line old Norman Church | at Northampton, where he lies buried a 
few feet from the west tower. The bust is placed within the church, 
against the west wall ot the nave, south of the grand Norman arch over 
the entrance to the tower." J It stands on a marble pedestal inscribed : 
" To honour the name of William Smith, LL.D. This monument 
is erected by Friends and Fellow -labourers in the same field of British 
Geology, Born 23rd. March, 1769, at Churchill in Oxfordshire, and 
trained to the Profession of a Civil Engineer and Mineral Surveyor. He 
began, in 1791, to survey collieries and plan canals in the vicinity of 
Bath, and having observed that several strata of that district were 
characterised by peculiar groups of organic remains he adopted this 
fact as a principle of comparison, and was by it enabled to identify the 
strata in distant parts of this island, to construct sections, and to 
complete and publish in 1815 a Geological Map of England and Wales. 
By thus devoting, during his whole life, all the power of an observing 
mind to the advancement of one branch of Science, he gained the title of 
the " Father of English Geology." While on his way to a meeting of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Birmingham, 
he died in this town, at the house of his friend George Baker, the histor- 
ian of Northamptonshire, 28th of August, 1839." 
A photograph of this bust is given by Dr. Woodward in his 
paper quoted, and through his kindness we are able to reproduce the 
block (pi. XXI.). A copy of the bust is with the Smith collection in 
the British Museum (Natural History) ; another is with the Geological 
Society, London, another is at Scarborough in the possession of the 
Misses Turnbull, grand-daughters of Smith's apprentice at Hackness. 
* This ' at some length ' was evidently one of Smith's weaknesses, 
t St. Peter's. Phillips states All Saints', but that is an error. 
X Woodward, Proc. Bath. Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Field Club. 
Vol. X., Part I., 1902, p. 12 (of reprint). 
