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598 of which body in later years he was a vice-president. His first paper, presented to the society in 1791, was &ldquo;An Account of some Chemical Experiments on Tabasheer,&rdquo; and was followed from that time until 1817 with eight other memoirs treating for the most part of chemical analyses of various substances, principally minerals. He lived chiefly abroad, engaged in extensive tours in various parts of Europe, making minute observations wherever he went on the climate, physical features, and geological structure of the locality visited, the characteristics of its minerals, the methods employed in mining or smelting ores, and in all kinds of manufactures. Desirous of bringing to the practical test of actual experiment everything that came to his notice, he fitted up and carried with him a portable laboratory. He collected also a cabinet of minerals, composed of thousands of minute specimens, including all the rarest gems, so that immediate comparison could be made of a novel or undetermined specimen with an accurately arranged and labelled collection. Among the minerals that he examined was a carbonate of zinc that he discovered among some ores from Somersetshire and Derbyshire, England, that was named Smithsonite in his honor by the great French mineralogist, Beudant. From 1819 till his death his scientific memoirs were contributed to Thomson's &ldquo;Annals of Philosophy.&rdquo; Besides his connection with the Royal society, he was long a member of the French institute. He died in Genoa, where he had been residing temporarily, and a monument was erected to his memory in the Protestant cemetery. His illegitimate birth seems to have induced a strong desire for posthumous fame, although his scientific reputation was of the best, and at one time he writes: &ldquo;The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings; but it avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of

the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten.&rdquo; In order to carry out his ambition he bequeathed his property, about &pound;120,000, to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, for his life, and after his decease, to his surviving children, but in the event of his dying without a child or children, then the whole of the property was &ldquo;left to the United States for the purpose of founding an institution at Washington to be called the Smithsonian institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.&rdquo; By the death of his nephew in 1835 without heirs, the property devolved upon the United States, and on 1 Sept., 1838, after a suit in chancery, there was paid into the U. S. treasury $508,318.46. The disposition of the bequest was for several years before

congress, but in August, 1846, the Smithsonian institution was founded, and an act of congress was passed directing the formation of a library, a museum (for which it granted the collections belonging to the United States), and a gallery of art, while it left to the regents the power of adopting such other parts of an organization as they may deem best suited to promote the objects of the bequest. Joseph Henry was chosen its executive officer, and under his wise management the institution has developed until it has grown to be one of the most important scientific centres of the world. A portion of the institution, of which the corner-stone was laid 1 May, 1847, is seen in the accompanying illustration. On 24 Jan., 1865, a part of it was destroyed by fire. See &ldquo;The Scientific Writings of James Smithson &rdquo; (Washington, 1879); &ldquo;The Smithsonian Institution: Documents relative to its Origin and History,&rdquo; by William J. Rhees (1879); and &ldquo;Smithson and his Bequest,&rdquo; by William J. Rhees (1880).

SMOCK, John Conover, geologist, b. in Holm- del, N. J., 21 Sept., 1842. He was graduated at Rutgers in 1862, and was tutor in chemistry at that institution in 1865-'7. In 1867 he became pro- fessor-elect of mining and metallurgy, and he held full possession of the chair in 187i-'85. Mean- while he studied at the Berg-Akademie and at the university of Berlin in 1869-'70, and he was assistant on the geological survey of New Jersey in 1864 '85, except during 1869-'70. Prof. Smock was ap- pointed assistant-in-charge of the New York state museum in 1885, which "place he held five years. The degree of Ph. D. was conferred on him by Lafayette in 1882. He was a manager of the American institute of mining engineers in 1875-'7. Prof. Smock is the author of numerous papers that have been contributed to the transactions of so- cieties of which he is a member, and was associated with Prof. George H. Cook in the preparation of the annual reports of the geological survey of New Jersey for the years 1871-'84, and also iii the separate volumes on the " Geology of New Jersey " (Newark, 1868) and the " Report on Clay Deposits " (1878). He has recently issued, from the New York state museum of natural history, Bulletin No. 3, " On Building-Stones in New York " (Albany, 1888).

SMYBERT, or SMIBERT, John, artist, b. in Edinburgh, Scotland, about 1684; d. in Boston, Mass., in 1751. He had some elementary instruction in Edinburgh, and subsequently studied in Sir James Thornhill's academy in London. Then followed a three years' sojourn in Italy, where he was commissioned by the grand-duke "of TUM-UIV to paint the portraits of some Siberian Tartars. After his return to London, Bishop Berkeley engaged him as professor of the fine arts in his projected college in Bermuda, and he accompanied Berkeley to this country, arriving at Newport in 1729. The Bermuda project proving a failure, Smybert went to Boston, where he established himself as a portrait-painter, and married in 1730. Gulian C. Verplanck said of him : " Smybert was not an artist of the first rank, for the arts were then at a very low ebb in England, but the best portraits which we have of the eminent magistrates and divines of New England and New York who lived between 1729 and 1751 are from his pencil." His most important work is the painting of Bishop Berkeley and his family, executed in 1731, and presented to Yale college in 1808. Other portraits from his hand, including those of Jonathan Edwards, Judge Edmund Quincy, Gov. John Endicott, and Peter Faneuil. are in the possession of the Boston museum of fine arts, the Massachu-