Electronic edition published by Cultural Heritage Langauge Technologies (with permission from Charles Scribners and Sons) and funded by the National Science Foundation International Digital Libraries Program. This text has been proofread to a low degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using data entry.
SMITH, WILLIAM (b. Churchill, Oxfordshire,
England, 23 March 1769; d. Northampton, England,
28 August 1839), geology.
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