SMITH, WILLIAM (b. Churchill, Oxfordshire, England, 23 March 1769; d. Northampton, England, 28 August 1839), geology.

    achievement. It represented about 65,000 square miles, was the first large-scale geological map of any country, and was based on the scientific principles discovered by Smith himself. Moreover, the coloring was designed to indicate not only the surface area of any one geological formation, but, by using a deeper shade along the base of a formation, an attempt was also made to show how the beds were superimposed; thus a structural factor was introduced.

This map owed remarkably little to the work of others. Smith's manuscript maps of 1801 and 1802 show his early grasp of the general succession across England; and a comparison of his 1815 map with a modern geological map of England, on the same scale, shows the extent of his knowledge. Errors, of course, were made, and the more important were pointed out in 1818 by Fitton (Edinburgh Review, 29, 310 - 337). But the amount of correct detail that Smith recorded is amazing and still impresses modern geologists. A stratigraphical succession of twenty-one sedimentary beds or groups of beds was shown in different colors, and one more color was used for large masses of granite or other crystalline rocks. Different signs were used to indicate mines of tin, lead, and copper; for collieries; and for salt and alum works. Not content with the map as issued in 1815, during the next few years Smith continued to make small alterations and additions, marked by changes of coloring and engraving. A noteworthy addition, made soon after April 1816, was the insertion of another limestone distinguished by its fossils, the Coral Rag, colored in orange. This outcrop was added first in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire and later, perhaps in 1817, in Yorkshire.

Smith's other cartographic publications - his geological sections across parts of England and his county maps - demonstrate his continued interest in field geology and its economic importance. This interest is particularly well shown by his four-sheet map of Yorkshire (1821), which has many details concerning the coal seams and their accompanying grits and sandstones.

Although Smith's map was superseded in 1820 by the geological map compiled by Greenough (published by the Geological Society), his county maps were used by geologists for many years; and their value was acknowledged by Sedgwick in 1831 (Proceedings of the Geological Society, 1, 278).

Smith's two publications on fossils, Strata Identified and Stratigraphical System, were complementary to his cartographic work. They appeared at a time when some prominent geologists were still unwilling to admit the value of fossils in determining the stratigraphical succession, but within a few years this opposition was overcome. Smith's publications no doubt contributed to the changed outlook. Certainly no one could deny Smith's right to the title “Founder of Stratigraphical Geology.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS.

All known publications by Smith are listed in Joan M. Eyles, “William Smith (1769 - 1839): A Bibliography of His Published Writings, Maps and Geological Sections, Printed and Lithographed,” in Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 5 (1969), 87 - 109. A large collection of his MSS is in the possession of the Department of Mineralogy and Geology, University of Oxford. His portrait in oils by Fourau (1837) is owned by the Geological Society of London.

II. SECONDARY LITERATURE.

John Phillips published a biography soon after his uncle's death: Memoirs of William Smith, LL.D. (London, 1844). This work was the principal source of information about Smith until the discovery of his papers at Oxford in 1938. These were examined and arranged by L. R. Cox, who gave an account of them in “New Light on William Smith and His Work,” in Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 25 (1942), 1 - 99. A detailed and well-illustrated, although uncritical, account of Smith's principal publications is in T. Sheppard, “William Smith: His Maps and Memoirs,” ibid, 19 (1917), 75 - 253; repr. (Hull, 1920). Both Sheppard and Cox provide extensive bibliographies, that by Cox being supplemental to Sheppard's. An account of Smith's 1797 MS list is given by J. A. Douglas and L. R. Cox, “An Early List of Strata by William Smith,” in Geological Magazine, 86 (1849), 180 - 188.

The principal sources of information about Smith available to 1967 are described by J. M. Eyles in “William Smith: Some Aspects of His Life and Work,” in C. J. Schneer, ed., Toward a History of Geology, (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 142 - 158; details of Smith's work as related to the construction of the Somerset Coal Canal are also in this paper. Smith's work in Somerset is also described by John G. C. M. Fuller, “The Industrial Basis of Stratigraphy: John Strachey, 1671 - 1743 and William Smith, 1769 - 1839,” in American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 53 (1969), 2256 - 2273.

A useful collection of quotations by and about Smith is in D. A. Bassett, “William Smith, the Father of English Geology and Stratigraphy: An Anthology,” in Geology: Journal of the Association of Teachers of Geology,