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Somerville in the Treasurership of the College in 1874. Dr Smith 
began practice as a physician, and continued in it through life, hut 
his practice was never large. Possessed of means sufficient to enable 
him to follow his tastes for natural science and archaeology, inde- 
pendently of professional income, these pursuits became the leading 
work of his life. But his professional brethren were never slow to 
acknowledge his skill in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. 
Had circumstances made it necessary to devote himself earnestly to 
his profession, it would hardly have been possible for him to have 
done half the work he accomplished in the literature of his favourite 
studies and in behalf of the Societies of which he was a Fellow. 
When Dr Smith joined the Eoyal Physical Society it counted 
among its working Fellows, Knox, Captain Thomas Brown, Car- 
penter, Edward Forbes, Greville, Simpson, Goodsir, George Wilson, 
John Coldstream, Sir J. G. Daly ell, Charles Maclaren, and, later, 
Robert Chambers, John Fleming, Hugh Miller, and others who have 
done good work in Scottish Zoology and Geology. Dr Smith suc- 
ceeded the late Sir Wyville Thomson as its Secretary, an office which 
he held for more than twenty years. In addition to his work as 
Secretary, he contributed many papers to the Society, some of much 
value. More than a hundred notices of birds, many of them new to 
Scotland, and some new to Britain, were written by him. In these 
he put on record all peculiarities as to time of visit, plumage, food, 
&c. In the Proceedings of the same Society are between twenty and 
thirty notices of fishes by him, including remarks on the divergence 
of some of the specimens from typical varieties in hermaphroditism, 
and other highly exceptional features. But he did not limit his 
observation to birds and fishes. Insects, reptiles, and mammals were 
described with equal interest and skill, while several mineralogical 
notices indicate his familiarity with this branch. On resigning the 
office of Secretary he was elected President, and in November 1876 
delivered the address at the opening of the 106th Session of the 
Society. This address contains a complete list of his friend Dr 
Strethill Wright’s numerous original papers on Protozoa and Ccelen- 
terata, and in a somewhat incisive way he states his opinion of 
Darwinism, and frankly avows his belief in the doctrine of special 
creation and in the Bible views of the natural history of man. 
On the 16th of April 1866 Dr Smith read to this Society a 
