Dictionary of Scientific Biography

articled to Webb, but he learned all the duties of a land surveyor and valuer and must have become well qualified.

In the autumn of 1791 Webb sent Smith to survey and value an estate in north Somerset. He went there on foot and lodged at Rugborne Farm, near High Littleton, about eight miles southwest of Bath. Smith later designated this farmhouse “the birth-place of English geology,” for it was there that he began to think about the succession of the strata. The house is still standing, almost unaltered since Smith lodged there. At that time the district had many active coal mines, and Smith went underground to examine some of them and draw plans. He also prepared a map of High Littleton that still exists.

In 1793 Smith was engaged by a group of local landowners to make a survey for a proposed canal, on which the coal from their mines could be carried to a wider market at a lower cost. In March 1794 he gave evidence before Parliament in connection with the act authorizing the canal construction; and in August he went with two members of the canal committee on a carriage tour to the north of England to see other canals and collieries. The tour provided him with valuable additions to his knowledge of the strata, a subject in which he was increasingly interested. While in London he had visited booksellers in order to find books on geology, but with little success.

Work on the canal, which became known as the Somerset Coal Canal, began in July 1795. Two branches, each extending from the coal-mining areas along nearly parallel valleys and each about six miles long, were to be constructed. From their meeting point a canal two miles long would connect with the Kennet and Avon Canal, also under construction; the latter was intended to link Bath with the towns of Newbury and Reading in the Thames Valley.

Smith was employed by the Canal Company from 1794 to 1799; and during this period, he became familiar with the strata through which the canal passed, from Triassic marls to the Lias and Oolites of the Jurassic. He collected fossils, and his notes show that by January 1796 he had made the great discovery that lithologically similar beds can be distinguished by the assemblage of fossils found in them, a concept virtually unrecognized by the geologists of that period. He also began to color maps to show how the different beds outcropped around the neighboring hills. In June 1799 his engagement with the Canal Company was terminated; and about this time he dictated to two local clergymen, Joseph Townsend and Benjamin Richardson, both collectors of fossils, a list of the strata found around Bath and the fossils characteristic of each. This list is deservedly famous. A contemporary copy, and also a map by Smith of the country five miles around Bath “colored geologically in 1799,” is held by the Geological Society of London.

Smith had already drained some land for local landowners, and this type of work offered him prospects of traveling about the country and seeing more of its geology. In 1800 he was employed by a famous landowner and agriculturist Thomas Coke of Holkham in Norfolk; and in 1801 Coke introduced him to Francis, Duke of Bedford, who then employed Smith on his Woburn estate. Both Coke and the duke held large annual meetings on their estates to coincide with the June sheepshearings, and these were attended by many prominent landowners, including distinguished foreigners. From 1801 Smith went to these meetings, exhibited his maps, and talked about geology and its economic value. Several small maps of England and Wales colored geologically by Smith around 1801 - 1803 are still extant.

In 1802 Smith first met Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, and explained his ideas to him. Banks greeted Smith's proposal for a geological map of England and Wales with enthusiasm and encouraged him to complete it. Smith had already issued a printed prospectus, dated 1 June 1801, of his projected work; and a list of subscribers had been opened. The book was to be called “Accurate Delineations and Descriptions of the Natural Order of the Various Strata That Are Found in Different Parts of England and Wales”; it was to be accompanied by a “correct map of the strata.”

Nevertheless, during the next ten years, Smith's only publication was a nongeological book on irrigation and water meadows (1806). From this venture he learned that books are not necessarily profitable to their authors. He continued to make numerous notes and write portions of his proposed work on geology but was constantly employed on different projects and had little spare time for concentrated writing, even though he employed an amanuensis to copy his notes. His work varied from the construction of sea defenses on the east coast of England and in South Wales, to supervising sinkings for coal in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and to reporting on the value of estates. In 1804 he