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Monday, February 17, 1851. 

 Dr CHRISTISON, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The following Communications were read : — 



1. Biographical Notice of the late Robert Stevenson, 

 Esq., Civil Engineer. By his Son, Alan Stevenson, L.L.B. 

 Communicated by Dr T. S. Ti-aill. 



This memoii- commences by stating that Mr Stevenson was born 

 at Glasgow on the 5th May 1772, and that he died at Edinburgh, in 

 the seventy-ninth year of his age, on the 12th July 1850. The 

 writer then notices the disadvantages under which Mr Stevenson 

 laboured in infancy and youth, owing to the death of his father, who 

 was a partner in a West India House in Glasgow, and died in the 

 Island of St Christophers soon after the birth of his only child. In 

 spite of these, and by the prudence and energy of his mother, Ro- 

 bert Stevenson had the benefit of a tolerably full course of train- 

 ing both in science and literature, first at the Andersonian Institu- 

 tion in Glasgow, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh ; 

 and so great was his zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, that, while 

 acting during the summer as a superintendent of works, under Mr 

 Smith, the engineer of the Lighthouse Board, his future father-in- 

 law, he regularly devoted the winter months to the study of mathe- 

 matics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and architectural drawing. 

 Some pretty long extracts from some MSS. memoranda, left by Mr 

 Stevenson himself, and from his " Account of the Bell Rock 

 Lighthouse," next follows ; and in them an interesting view is 

 given of his early designs for the Bell Rock Lighthouse, and of the 

 difficulties with which he had to contend, and the encouragements he 

 met with in reference to his great enterprise. The writer then goes 

 on very briefly to notice his father's long service of about ibrty 

 years as engineer to the Commissioners of the Northern Light- 

 houses, in which office he succeeded his father-in-law, Mr Smith, 

 in 1806. During that period, he was the architect of no fewer than 



