William Smith: His Maps and Memoirs

Abstract

MR. SHEPPARD has spared no pains in making bibliography attractive. He has reproduced by photography original title-pages and maps; he has added portraits, and views of William Smith's homes at Midford and at Harkness—the latter from a good oil-painting. By quoting characteristic passages, including “The Geology of England: Mr. Wm. Smith's Claims,” published in 1817, he has given a very interesting and effective picture of the man. The rarity of Smith's original works—only 250 copies seem to have been printed of the four parts of “Strata identified by Organized Fossils”-has rendered Mr. Sheppard's collation of various copies a labour of time as well as of pious erudition. The result is a book that will be welcomed in every scientific library. Smith's sections across various English districts are here given in a reduced form, and we are grateful to the Yorkshire Geological Society for undertaking this liberality of illustration when Mr. Sheppard's memoir first appeared in its Proceedings. As the author points out, Messrs. Cruchley of London, in quite recent years, sold road-maps of English counties reproduced from John Cary's plates (though of course with the addition of railways), and on some at least of these William Smith's geological data still appeared. If the original plates exist, it might be possible to reconstruct for libraries Smith's “Geological Atlas,” much as it was issued between 1819 and 1824. William Smith: His Maps and Memoirs. T. Sheppard By. Pp. iii + 75–253 + plates. (Hull: A. Brown and Sons, Ltd., 1920.) Price 7s. 6d.