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of Edinburgh, Session 1873 - 74 . 
November 1837. It was carried on in numbers, appearing three 
times a year, under the editorship of Gregory, until his death, and 
has been continued under various editors, and with several changes 
of name, till the present time, when it is represented by the 
“ Quarterly Journal of Mathematics” and the “Messenger of 
Mathematics.” The original “ Cambridge Mathematical Journal ” 
of Smith and Gregory, containing as it did many admirable papers 
by Smith and Gregory themselves, and by other able contributors, 
early attracted to it, among whom were Greatheed, Donkin, 
Walton, Sylvester, Ellis, Cayley, Boole, inaugurated a most fruitful 
revival of mathematics in England, of which Herschel, Peacock, 
Babbage and Green, had been the prophets and precursors. 
It is much to be regretted that neither Cambridge nor the 
university of his native city could offer a position to Smith, 
enabling him to make the mathematical and physical science for 
which he felt so strong an inclination, and for which he had so 
great capacity, the professional work of his life. Two years after 
taking his degree, he commenced reading law in London, but his 
inclination was still for science. Relinquishing reluctantly a 
Trinity Lectureship offered to him by Whewell in 1838, and offered 
again and almost accepted in 1810, resisting a strong temptation 
to accompany Sir James Boss to the Antarctic regions on the 
scientific exploring expedition of the “ Erebus” and “ Terror” in 
1810-11, and regretfully giving up the idea of a Scottish professor- 
ship, which, during his early years of residence in Lincoln’s Inn, 
had many attractions for him, he finally made the bar his pro- 
fession. But during all the long years of hard work, through which 
he gradually attained to an important and extensive practice, and 
to a high reputation as a Chancery barrister, he never lost his 
interest in science, nor ceased to be actively engaged in scientific 
pursuits; and he always showed a lively and generous sympathy 
with' others, to whom circumstances (considered in this respect 
enviable by him) had allotted a scientific profession. 
About the year 1811 his attention was drawn to the problem of 
ships’ magnetism by his friend Major Sabine, who was at that 
time occupied with the reduction of his own early magnetic 
observations made at sea on board the ships “Isabella” and 
“ Alexander,” on the Arctic Expedition of 1818, and of corres- 
