276 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



lections are bequeathed to the State Scientific and Agricultural College, 

 just established at Columbus, and to the Starling Medical College, 

 founded by his uncle, and of which he was himself the Senior Trustee. 

 Mr. SuUivant was chosen into the American Academy in the year 

 184"). He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Gam- 

 bier ColIeffCv in his natives State. His oldest botanical associates lonjj 

 ago enjoyed the pleasure of bestowing the name of SuUirantia OMonis 

 upon a very rare and interesting, but modest and neat Saxifi-agaceous 

 plant, which he himself discovered in his native State, on the secluded 

 banks of a tributary of the river which ilows by the place where he was 

 born, and where his remains now repose. 



William John Macquokn Rankine was born in Edinburgh, 

 Scotland, on the 5th of July, 1820. His early education was acquired 

 partly in the Academy of Ayr and the High School of Glasgow, but 

 mainly, it is said, from his father, during a long cor^nement from a 

 surgical ailment. On recovering his health, he became, while yet quite 

 young, a student in several of the scientific classes of the University 

 of Edinburgh, having as his instructor in physics Professor James D. 

 Forbes. At the age of eighteen he began the pi-actice of his future 

 profession, civil engineering, under Sir John Macneill, and served three 

 or four years under that eminent master, mainly on engineering works 

 in Ireland. During the next ten years he was employed in Scotland 

 on various works, chiefly railways ; and about the beginning of the 

 year 1851 he settled in Glasgow, to practise his profession, in partner- 

 ship with Mr. John Thomson. In 1855 he was appointed Regius 

 Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics in the University of 

 Glasgow, a position which he held the remainder of his life. On the 

 2 "id of December, 1872, an attack of paralysis closed an illness of sev- 

 eral months, during which he suffered from heart disease, and an affec- 

 tion of the eyes that almost deprived him of sight. His death followed 

 late on i\\e evening of the 24th of December, 1872. 



It is impossible in this brief notice to do justice to the scientific 

 labors of Professor Rankine. His contributions to various scientific 

 journals are very numerous, and were begun when he was little more 

 than eighteen years of age. In December, 1838, Professor Forbes 

 presented for him to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper on the 

 results of observations with "WheweU's anemometer ; and for the next 

 thirty-five years there followed an uninterrupted series of papers, 

 admirable in tone, and remarkable for their clearness, precision, and 

 force. Among tho most important of these papers are those on Molec- 



