THE EDDYSTONE : FACTS AND FICTIONS. 
209 
exception has been taken to his reasons for adopting the particular 
form he did — and I believe, scientifically speaking, these reasons 
were shown by Mr. Alan Stevenson to be fallacious — yet his 
fabric has been the model on which subsequent lighthouses have 
almost without exception been constructed. 
It is said that he was wrong in taking the oak as his model 
(the Cowthorpe oak being the particular one which inspired him 
with the idea), because the action of the winds upon the out- 
spread branches of the tree is different from that of the waves 
upon a pillar rising from their midst. 
Some improvements in this respect have consequently been 
introduced into recent erections, and notably the Douglass tower. 
But it was from no defect of form or construction that it became 
necessary to remove Smeaton's lighthouse. 
Very curiously, it has been stated, over and over again, that 
Smeaton's lighthouse, either in whole or in part, was destroyed 
(and by fire too) in 1770, and rebuilt in 1774. Other writers vary 
this fiction by stating that Smeaton built his lighthouse in 1774. 
I first met with this latter assertion in the volume of Cooke's 
Topographical Library containing an account of Devonshire, 
(p. 215.) There are various editions of this work, most of which 
repeat the same error, but the one I quote from was published 
between 1820 and 1824. A view of the building, published about 
1839 by Cleave's Penny Gazette, has the legend, "Erected 1774." 
I should have taken little notice of this curious error, but that 
it seems to have been accepted as true by persons who would 
have been expected to have known its impossibility. 
For instance, so eminent a member of the Koyal Archaeological 
Institute as Mr. Octavius S. Morgan, in the introductory remarks 
to his article, published in the Society's Journal in 1878, describing 
a silver model of Winstanley's lighthouse as he first built it, 
makes this express statement. Speaking of the third lighthouse, 
he says, " One built by Mr. Smeaton partly of timber in 1759. 
Of this the woodwork was burnt in 1770, but renewed by him 
with stone and metal in 1774, since which time it has remained 
uninjured." 
Considering that so eminent an antiquary would not have made 
this assertion without at least supposing that he had some 
foundation for it, I endeavoured to communicate with him, 
in order to ascertain on what grounds he based the words. I 
