Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/323

Rh, and for family reasons preferred to live on the Continent, spending most of his time in France, Italy, and Germany; in his constant journeys he made observations on the climate, physical features, geology, and industries of the regions visited. He formed collections of minerals, and, for convenience of analyzing them, traveled with a portable chemical laboratory.

Living on the Continent, he acquired a cosmopolitan character, and formed acquaintance with the leading savants of the time; among his friends and corrrespondents were Gay-Lussac, the chemist; Haüy, the mineralogist; Arago, the astronomer; Biot, the physicist, of France; Berzelius, the chemist, of Sweden; and Davy, Black, Wollaston, Cavendish, Thomson, Smithson Tennant, chemical philosophers, of England. If it is "by a man's position among his contemporaries and competitors that his work may most justly be appraised," Smithson's scientific attainments must be rated very highly.

Between the years 1701 and 1825 Smithson published twenty-seven scientific papers, of which eight appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and nineteen in Thomson's Annals of Philosophy. These memoirs embrace a wide range of research: the first deals with the curious deposit in bamboo called tabasheer, which he proved to be "siliceous earth"; the second was a "Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines," in which he established a new mineral species, afterward named smithsonite by Beudant (1832). The larger number of his papers deal with chemistry applied to mineral analysis, but he also discussed the nature of vegetables and insects, the origin of the earth, the crystalline form of ice, and an improved method of making coffee. An examination of these contributions to knowledge shows that he was no mere dilettante in science, and that he carried on his researches in a philosophic spirit for the sake of truth; all his writings exhibit keen perception, concise language, and accurate expression.

Of Smithson's personal traits and social character very little is known; his dislike of publicity, his natural reserve, as well as his residence in foreign countries, separated him from friends who might have given us particulars. It is said that he frequently narrated an anecdote of himself which illustrated his remarkable skill in analyzing minute quantities of substances, an ability which rivaled that of Dr. Wollaston. Happening to observe a tear gliding down a lady's cheek, he endeavored to catch it on a crystal vessel; one half the tear-drop escaped, but he subjected the other half to reagents, and detected what was then called microcosmic salt, muriate of soda, and some other saline constituents held in solution.

James Smithson died at the age of sixty-four years, on the 27th of June, 1829, at Genoa, Italy and was buried in the Protestant