The great value of these discoveries induced the trustees of the museum to despatch Mr. Smith on another expedition in order to excavate the remainder of Assur-bani-pal's library at Kouyunjik, and so complete the collection of tablets in the British Museum. Mr. Smith accordingly went to Constantinople last October, and after some trouble succeeded in obtaining a firman for excavating. He set out for his last and fatal journey to the East in March, taking with him Dr. Eneberg, a Finnic Assyriologue. While detained at Aleppo on account of the plague, he explores the banks of the Euphrates from the Balis northward, and at Yerabolus discovered the ancient Hittite capital, Carchemish — a discovery which bids fair to rival in importance that of Nineveh itself. After visiting Devi, or Thapsakus, and other places, he made his way to Bagdad, where he procured between two and three thousand tablets discovered by some Arabs in an ancient Babylonian library near Hillah. From Bagdad he went to Kouyunjik, and found, to his intense disappointment, that owing to the troubled state of the country it was impossible to excavate. Meanwhile Dr. Eneberg had died, and Mr. Smith, worn out by fatigue and anxiety, broke down at Ikisji, a small village about sixty miles north-east of Aleppo. Here he was found by Mr. Parsons, and Mrs. Skene, the consul's wife at Aleppo, and a medical man having been sent for, conveyed him by easy stages to Aleppo, where he died August 19th. He has left behind him the MS. of a "History of Babylonia," intended to be a companion volume to his "History of Assyria," published by the S. P. C. K. last year.
Mr. Smith's obliging kindness was only equalled by his modesty. Shortly after his return from his first expedition he was showing the present writer some of the tablets he had found, when a lady and gentleman came up and asked various questions, to which he replied with his usual courtesy. They thanked him and were turning away when, hearing his name pronounced, the lady asked: "Are you Mr. Smith?" On his replying, "That is my name, madam," she exclaimed, "What, not the great Mr. Smith!" and then, like the gentleman with her, insisted upon having "the honor" of shaking hands with the distinguished Assyriologue, while the latter crimsoned to the roots of his hair. His loss is an irreparable one to Assyriology, even beyond his powers as a decipherer, as his memory enabled him to remember the place and nature of each of the myriad clay fragments now in the museum, while his keenness of vision made his copies of the minute characters of the tablets exceptionally trustworthy. It is distressing to think that he leaves behind him a wife and large family of small children, the youngest of whom was born but a short time before his last departure from England. A. H. Sayce.
From The Athenaeum.
BRITISH ASSOCIATION.
At a meeting of the British Association the president, Sir W. Thomson, in his opening address, said: —
Six weeks ago, when I landed in England after a most interesting trip to America and back, and became painfully conscious that I must have the honor to address you here to-day, I wished to write an address of which science in America should be the subject. I came home, indeed, vividly impressed with much that I had seen, both in the Great Exhibition of Philadelphia and out of it, showing the truest scientific spirit and devotion, the originality, the inventiveness, the patient, persevering thoroughness of work, the appreciativeness, and the generous open-mindedness and sympathy from which the great things of science comes. I wish I could speak to you of the veteran Henry, generous rival of Faraday in electro-magnetic discovery; of Peirce, the founder of high mathematics in America; of Bache, and of the splendid heritage he has left to America and to the world in the United States Coast Survey; of the great school of astronomers which followed Gould, Newton, Newcomb, Watson, Young, Clarke, Rutherford, Draper, father and son; of Commander Belknap and his great exploration of the Pacific depths by pianoforte wire, with imperfect apparatus supplied from Glasgow, out of which he forced a success in his own way; of Capt. Sigsbee, who followed with like fervor and resolution, and made further improvements in the apparatus by which he has done marvels of easy, quick, and sure deep-sea sounding in his little surveying ship "Blake"; and of the admirable official spirit which makes such men and such doings possible in the United States Naval Service. I would like to tell you, too, of my reason for confidently expecting that American hydrography will soon supply the data from tidal observations long ago asked of our government in vain by a committee of the British Association, by which the
