Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/23

 Rh was well alive in the firm when, in 1838, Smith first enlisted in its service. That year saw the issue of the first portion of the great collected edition of Sir Humphry Davy's ‘Works,’ which was completed in nine volumes next year. In 1838, too, the firm inaugurated a series of elaborate reports of recent expeditions which the government had sent out for purposes of scientific exploration. The earliest of these great scientific publications was Sir Andrew Smith's ‘Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa,’ of which the first volume was issued in 1838, and four others followed between that date and 1847, all embellished with drawings of exceptional beauty by George Henry Ford. The government made a grant of 1,500l. in aid of the publication, and the five volumes were sold at the high price of 18l. Of like character were the reports of the scientific results of Admiral Sir Edward Belcher's voyage to the Pacific in the Sulphur : a volume on the zoology, prepared by Richard Brinsley Hinds, came out under Smith, Elder, & Co.'s auspices in 1843, a second volume (on the botany) appeared in the next year, and a third volume (completing the zoology) in 1845. That was Smith, Elder, & Co.'s third endeavour in this special class of publication. To the second a more lasting interest attaches. It was ‘The Zoological Report of the Expedition of H.M.S. Beagle,’ in which Darwin sailed as naturalist. 1,000l. was advanced by the government to the firm for the publication of this important work. The first volume appeared in large quarto in 1840. Four more volumes completed the undertaking by 1848, the price of the whole being 8l. 15s. Smith, Elder, & Co. were thus brought into personal relations with Darwin, the earliest of their authors who acquired worldwide fame. Independently of his official reports they published for him, in more popular form, extracts from them in volumes bearing the titles ‘The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs’ in 1842, ‘Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands’ in 1844, and ‘Geological Observations on South America’ in 1846.

The widening range of the firm's dealings with distant lands in its capacity of Indian agents rendered records of travel peculiarly appropriate to its publishing department, and Smith, Elder, & Co. boldly contemplated the equipment on their own account of explorers whose reports should serve them as literature. About 1840 Austen Henry Layard set out, at their suggestion, in the company of Edward Mitford, on an overland journey to Asia ; but the two men quarrelled on the road, and the work that the firm contemplated was never written. Another project which was defeated by a like cause was an expedition to the south of France, on which Leitch Ritchie and James Augustus St. John started in behalf of Smith, Elder, & Co.'s publishing department. But the firm was never dependent on any single class of publication. It is noteworthy that no sooner had it opened relations with Darwin, the writer who was to prove the greatest English naturalist of the century, than