282 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
be said of the man, and less of the engineer. No written record 
can express the singular powers of Mr Thomson’s mind and the 
charm of his character. The specialist in science, the professed 
chemist, the professed electrician, the professed geologist, the 
professed lawyer, all received suggestions from his fertile mind. 
The able and original paper on coal, read in this Society shortly 
before his death, affords an illustration of this sagacity of thought 
on subjects not specially his own. In art he had a cultivated 
taste, in narration and conversation he was unrivalled. All who 
conversed with him felt that they had never spoken so well them- 
selves, and had seldom met with so sympathetic a listener. He 
had an untiring toleration for the failings of mankind, without 
abating for an instant in its application to himself the high 
standard which he shrank from applying to others. Even under 
terrible pain, his enjoyment of truth, of nature, of all that was 
noble, seemed not to flag. He never repined, but worked to the 
last hour, not with mere resignation, but with a noble contentment. 
4. Obituary Notice of Archibald Smith. By 
Sir William Thomson. 
[Abridged (by direction of the Author) from Proc. R. £.] 
Archibald Smith, only son of James Smith, of Jordanhill, 
Renfrewshire, was born on the 10th of August 1813, at G-reenhead, 
Glasgow, in the house where his mother’s father lived. His father 
had literary and scientific tastes with a strong practical turn, 
fostered no doubt by his education in the University of Glasgow, 
and his family connection with some of the chief founders of the 
great commercial community which has grown up by its side. 
In published works on various subjects he left enduring monuments 
of a long life of actively employed leisure. His discovery of 
different species of Arctic shells, in the course of several years’ 
dredging from his yacht, and his inference of a previously existing 
colder climate in the part of the world now occupied by the British 
Islands, constituted a remarkable and important advancement of 
geological science. In his “ Voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul,” 
a masterly application of the principles of practical seamanship 
renders St Luke’s narrative more thoroughly intelligible to us now 
