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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Although Smith's map was superseded in 1820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,