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of Edinburgh, Session 1873 - 74 . 
most consummate practical skill, has been appreciated as a gift 
to the commonwealth of nations by other countries than our own. 
It is adopted by the United States Navy Department, and it has 
been translated into Russian, German, Portuguese, and French. 
Smith’s mathematical work, and particularly his beautiful and 
ingenious geometrical constructions, have attracted great interest, 
and have called forth fresh investigation in the same direction, 
among the well-instructed and able mathematicans of the American, 
Russian, French, and German Navy Departments. 
The constancy to the compass problem, in which Smith persevered 
with a rare extreme of disinterestedness, from the time when 
Sabine first asked him to work out practical methods from Poisson’s 
mathematical theory, until his health broke down two years before 
his death, was characteristic of the man. It was pervaded by that 
“ tenacite passionee” which a generous French appreciation de- 
scribes as a peculiarity of the English nation ; but there was in 
it also a single-mindedness and a purity of unselfishness to be found 
in few men of any nation, but simply natural in Archibald Smith. 
Honourable marks of appreciation reached him from various 
quarters, and gave him the more pleasure from being altogether 
unsought and unexpected. The Admiralty, in 1862, gave him 
a watch. In 1864 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from 
the University of Glasgow. The Royal Society awarded to him the 
Royal Medal in the year 1865. The Emperor of Russia gave him, 
in 1866, a gold compass, emblazoned with the Imperial Arms and 
set with thirty-two diamonds, marking the thirty-two points. Six 
months before his death Her Majesty’s Government requested his 
acceptance of a gift of L.2000, as a mark of their appreciation of 
“ the long and valuable services which he had gratuitously rendered 
to the Naval service in connection with the magnetism of iron 
ships, and the deviations of their compasses.” The official letter 
intimating this, dated Admiralty, July 1st, 1872, contains the 
following statement, communicated to Smith by command of the 
Lords of the Admiralty : — “ To the zeal and ability with which for 
many years you have applied yourself to this difficult and most 
important subject, My Lords attribute in a great degree the accu- 
rate information they possess in regard to the influence of mag- 
netism, which has so far conduced to the safe navigation of iron 
