Mr. Smith was now (1795) twenty-six years old, and at this period removed from the village of High Littleton to Bath, in the vicinity of which city he shortly afterwards purchased a small but beautiful estate. In the following year he first contemplated publishing his discoveries in geology, but it was not until the year 1799, after his engagement with the Coal Canal Company had ceased, that he made public his intention of publishing a work on the Stratification of Britain, and prosecuting an actual survey of the Geological structure of England and Wales. About this time he became acquainted with the Rev. Benjamin Richardson and the Rev. Jos. Townsend, two gentlemen thoroughly competent to estimate the truth and value of his views, and who, in conjunction with him, drew up a tabular statement of the order of the strata, with their imbedded organic remains, in the vicinity of Bath. Copies of this document were extensively distributed, and it remained for a long period the type and authority for the descriptions and order of the superposition of the strata near Bath. The original document, in Mr. Richardson's handwriting, drawn up from Smith's dictation, was presented to the Geological Society in 1831. Mr. Smith now turned all his energies to the prosecution of his profession, and the tracing out the courses of the strata through districts as remote from Bath as his means would permit. In 1799 an unusual amount of rain prevailed, producing in the neighbourhood of Bath an extraordinary phenomenon. Vast mounds of earth, displaced by the augmented force of the springs and the direction of water into new channels below the surface, were sliding down the sides of the hills, bearing away with them houses, trees, lawns, and fields. To remedy such disasters and prevent their recurrence was exactly what Smith had learnt from Geology, and many operations of this kind were placed under his care and successfully accomplished. His reputation for success in draining on new principles became established, carrying him into Gloucestershire, the Isle of Purbeck, Wiltshire, &c., and for the next few years he was almost daily occupied in various parts of the country, first in draining land, and secondly in irrigating it when drained. In 1801 he accomplished the effectual drainage of Prisley Bog, a work which had often been attempted before, but without success. Mr. Smith thoroughly deprived the bog of its stagnant water, and converted this hitherto worthless waste into valuable meadows, by conducting a running stream over its surface. For the performance of this undertaking he received in 1805 the medal of the Society of Arts. Another great work, on which he was engaged more or less during the space of nine years (1800-1809), was the draining of the marsh lands in East Norfolk, between Yarmouth and Happisburgh. These lands were continually liable to be flooded by inundations from the German Ocean, which poured in through breaches in