Heroes of science

by P. Martin Duncan

In the execution of the canal, Mr. Smith had found the means of applying his newly acquired knowledge to useful practical problems, such as how to draw the line through a country full of porous rocks, so as best to retain the limited supplies of water which frequent mills left to the navigation, where to place bridges on a good foundation, how to intercept and conduct the springs, and where to open quarries of proper stone. We find him also engaged, as early as 1796, in the short intervals which could be snatched from the main business before him, in putting to practical proof his theoretical views of the earth’s structure and the properties of the mixed calcareous and argillaceous strata in the hills near Bath, by a new and successful process of land-draining.

The earliest connected remarks which have been found, bear the date of January, 1796, and relate to organic remains and their distribution in the different strata. The vicinity of Bath is rich in fossils, and fine collections were formed there previous to Mr. Smith’s researches. It might be after inspecting some of these treasures, whose full value was so entirely unknown to their owners, that the following reflections, which strikingly illustrate the enlarged state of his own views at that period, were penned:—

“Dunkerton, Swan, Jan. 5, 1796.

“Fossils have been long studied as great curiosities, collected with great pains, treasured with great and at a great expense, and shown and admired with as much pleasure as a child’s hobby-horse is shown and admired by himself and his playfellows, because it is pretty; and this has been done by thousands who have never paid the least regard to that wonderful order and regularity with which nature has disposed of these singular productions, and assigned to each class its peculiar stratum.”

Gifted in a very uncommon degree with that philosophical faith in the generality and harmony of natural laws which is a characteristic of discoveries in natural science, Mr. Smith was at the same time remarkably disinclined to indulge in himself, or even to tolerate in others, mere speculations in geology. Whatever of this nature he found in the circle of his reading, was severely judged by a close collocation of the hypothesis which had been advanced with the phenomena of stratification which he had entirely established. These judgments might be erroneous in cases which required the knowledge of other data, not then collected, for a true and general solution; but the very unreasonableness of raising the standard of his own discoveries in a limited region, for condemning a speculation perhaps founded on other truths occurring elsewhere, shows how firmly these discoveries, and the influences belonging to them, were established and fortified in his mind. The following passage, written in January, 1796, might have been acknowledged by the author to contain his real opinions forty years later:—

“Therefore every man of prudence and observation who has paid the strictest attention to mineralogy, the structure of the earth, and the changes it has undergone, will be very cautious how he sets about to invent a system which nature cannot conform to without having recourse to subterraneous fires, volcanic eruptions, or uncommon convulsions, by which every hill and dale must have been formed and every rock must have been rent to form those chasms, which, in comparison to the strata they are found in, are no more than sun-cracks in a clod of clay; yet such has been the language of ingenious men, who have set their theoretical worlds a-going without either tooth or pinion of nature’s mechanism belonging to them.”

In October and November of this year (1796), we find him returning to the contemplation of organic remains; discussing the circumstances which attend the sparry substance occupying the place of the shell, which has been removed, in the lias, and the empty cavity, where the shell was, surrounding a loose stony cast of the interior, in the freestone (oolite).

That his mind was now actively employed in tracing out the bearings of the extensive subject before him, will be evident from the following extract, dated August, 1797:—

“Locality of plants, insects, birds, etc., arises from the nature of the strata.

“Where art has not diverted the order of things and nature is left to herself, a considerable locality may be observed in many animals and vegetables as well as mineral productions, by which they evidently attached to particular soils to such a degree that, if this subject were studied with attention, it would form one of the principal external characteristics of the strata underneath. Though it may seem mysterious to some, that birds, beasts, insects, etc., which have the liberty of roving at pleasure, should feel any particular attachment for this or that soil, yet the wonder ceases when we consider how the chain of natural things is linked together, and how these creatures are taught to cull their food from insects that are lodged in, or seeds that are produced from, particular plants that grow upon particular soils.”