Smith was employed at the British Museum (now Natural History Museum) as an assistant keeper of the zoological department for more than 40 years, from 1867 to 1913.[1][2] Edgar Smith's first work was in connection with the celebrated collection of shells made by Hugh Cuming and acquired by the museum in 1846, at which he worked under Dr. John Edward Gray.[2] From 1871, he was in immediate charge of the collection of molluscs, whilst till 1878, he was also responsible for the rest of the marine invertebrates with the exception of the Crustacea.[2] On the removal of the natural history collections from Bloomsbury to South Kensington, the arrangement of the Molluscan Collection in the then new Natural History Museum was, of course, his peculiar care and was planned by him with a special eye to the convenience of the numerous students and amateur collectors who have not been slow to avail themselves of it.[2] In 1895, Edgar Smith obtained his well-deserved promotion to the post of assistant keeper in the Zoological Department.[2]
Expeditions
Smith studied molluscs brought back by various expeditions such as those to Antarctic of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror (1839–1843), which had lain by untouched, were dealt with by him in 1875.[2] The Arctic specimens, collected on the polar voyage of HMS Alert and HMS Discovery (1875–1876), were described in 1878.[2] The results of the Transit of Venus Expedition (1874–1875) to Kerguelen Islands and Rodrigues were set forth in the special volume (vol. clxviii) of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1879.[2] The accounts of shells procured during the voyages of Alert to the Straits of Magellan and the Indo-Pacific (1878–1882) were published in 1881[3] and 1884.[2]
The reports on the bivalves and Heteropoda brought home by the Challenger expedition (1873–1876) were the most noteworthy of this series, and appeared in 1885 and 1888, respectively.[2]
Mention must also be made of his reports on the collections of molluscs of SS Southern Cross during Southern Cross expedition published 1902, from Sokotra 1903, from the Maldives and Laccadives 1902 and 1903, from the National Antarctic expedition of 1901–1904 in 1907, and finally the Terra Nova expedition in the Antarctic of 1910 in published in 1915.[2]
Smith wrote 10 papers on the Echinodermata, published between 1876 and 1879.[2] Most of his efforts, though, went into the systematic study of molluscs.[2] His research resulted in the publication of 300 separate memoirs on the Mollusca, and a few dealing with the Echinodermata.[1] Among his valuable works is the account of the bivalves collected by theChallenger expedition.[1]
The molluscan faunas of the African Great Lakes also claimed his attention, and formed the subject of a presidential address before the Malacological Society of London, in which no support was given to the views of Mr. John Edmund Sharrock Moore, who regarded the gastropods of Lake Tanganyika as representing forms that had their origin in marine Jurassic times.[1] Smith had described 18 new taxa based on shells collected by explorer Joseph Thomson.[6] His works about freshwater snails of Africa include a number of papers; new taxa described by Smith include:
Donax aemulus E. A. Smith, 1877 is a synonym of Donax lubricus Hanley, 1845[8]
1880
Smith E. A. (1880). "On the shells of Lake Tanganyika and of the neighbourhood of Ujiji, central Africa". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London1880: 344–352. Plate 31.
Streptaxis gigas E. A. Smith, 1880 was described according to juvenile shell and it has never been found again.[6] It belong to genus Gigantaxis (E. A. Smith, 1880)[6]
Caelatura aegyptica (Cailliaud, 1826) f. horei (E. A. Smith, 1880)[6] or Coelatura horei (E. A. Smith, 1880)[9]
Unio thomsoni E. A. Smith, 1880 is a synonym of Grandideriera burtoni (Woodward, 1859)[6]
1881
Smith E. A. (1881). "On a collection of shells from lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa and other localities in East Africa". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London1881: 276–300. Plates 32–34.
Ampullaria gradata E. A. Smith, 1881 is a synonym of Pila ovata (Olivier, 1804)[6][7]
Segmentina (Planorbula) alexandrina Ehrenberg var. tanganyicensis E. A. Smith, 1881 is referred as a synonym of Biomphalaria sudanica (von Martens, 1870)[6]
Unio nyassaensis Lea var. tanganyicensis E. A. Smith, 1881 is a synonym of Nyassunio nyassaensis (Lea, 1864)[6]
Smith E. A. (1881). "Descriptions of two new species of shells from Lake Tanganyika". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London1881: 558–561.
Mr. Smith had some slight connection with geological work, as he was appealed to on more than one occasion to determine molluscan remains found in the post-Pliocene deposits of South Africa, when the majority of the species could be referred to recent forms.[1] He was also joint author with Richard Bullen Newton of a paper:[1]
Newton R. B. & Smith E. A. (1912). "On the survival of a Miocene Oyster in Recent Seas". Records of the Geological Survey of India42: 1–15 pp., 8 plates.
^Smith E. A. (1881). "Account of the zoological collection made during the survey of H.M.S. Alert, in the Straits of Magellan and on the coast of Patagonia, IV: Mollusca and Molluscoida". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1881(1): 22–44. Plate 3.
^Smith E. A. (ed.) Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London. XI(1914–1915): frontispiece
^Graf D. L. (2008). Coelatura horei. In: IUCN 2011. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2011.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 28 August 2011.
Smith E. A. (1899?). "A catalogue of papers on Mollusca and Echinodermata by Edgar A. Smith, F.Z.S., etc." London: privately printed by Hazell, Watson and Viney, Ld., 14 pp.