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of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
many opportunities of carrying on in different localities his scientific 
inquiries, and his writings show how successfully he availed him- 
self of them. After the peace in 1814, Mr Smith visited France 
and Italy, where he resided for some time, occupied chiefly with the 
study of their works of art. About the year 1830 he began to take 
an active interest in the management of the Andersonian Institu- 
tion, of which he was President, and he was the founder of its 
Natural History Museum, and presented to it its valuable collec- 
tion of Scottish coins. His earliest scientific paper was a notice 
printed in the “ Transactions of the Antiquarian Society” of 
an undescribed vitrified fort in the Burnt Isles of the Kyles 
of Bute. In dredging on the Frith of Clyde, and examining 
the superficial deposits of the existing shells, he found that a 
large proportion of those which are not in the Clyde are still to 
be found in the Arctic Seas ; and he was thus led to announce to 
the G-eological Society in 1836, that the climate of this country 
was once colder than at present. From 1839 to 1846 Mr Smith 
resided successively at Madeira, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and Malta, on 
account of the health of some of his family, and in each of these 
localities he found the materials for the most interesting of his 
writings. 
During his residence at Malta he carried on those remarkable 
inquiries by which he has attained a high reputation as a Scripture 
critic and theologian. The work which contains them was pub- 
lished in 1848, under the title of “The Voyage and Shipwreck of 
St Paul, with Dissertations on the Life and Writings of St Luke, 
and the Ships and Navigation of the Ancients.” His views on the 
shipwreck of St Paul have been admired by the most eminent 
theologians of every country ; and his essay on the Life of St Luke 
and the sources of his writings, has been highly praised, even by 
those who do not adopt all the views of its author. In the last 
edition of this work, in 1866, Mr Smith has expressed his gratifica- 
tion on finding that his views have received a remarkable confir- 
mation by the publication of Dr Cureton’s translation of the newly 
discovered Syriac version of St Matthew. 
Mr Smith was a member of many of our scientific institutions. 
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1830, 
and of this Society in 1822. He was also a Fellow of the Wer- 
