544 Progress in Science. ‘O¢tober, 
wagons. The provision for loading coals consists of thirty-one balance tips 
and twelve hydraulic tips, or forty-three in all; and, as each tip is capable 
of shipping 560 tons of coal per day of ten hours, the total shipping capacity 
of the Bute Docks is nearly equal to 8 millions of tons per annum. 
We have to record the death, during the past quarter, of more than one 
eminent member of the Engineering Profession, amongst whom we may note 
Mr. T. Marr Johnson, Mr. John Grantham, Sir Charles Fox, Sir John Rennie, 
and Sir William Fairbairn. Sir William Fairbairn was born at Kelso, on the 
oth of February, 1789, his parents occupying a comparatively humble position 
in life. His first occupation was at the age of fourteen, when he obtained 
employment on the new bridge at Kelso, which was being erected by 
Mr. Rennie. Afterwards he was employed by his father on the Percy Main 
Colliery, of which he was manager, and at the age of sixteen he was appren- 
ticed to the Colliery Company, and he commenced a course of self-education. 
At the age of twenty-one years he found his way to London, where he first 
obtained work at Grundy’s Rope-Faétory, at Shadwell, and afterwards was 
engaged by Mr. Penn, at Greenwich. Afterwards he worked at the Phoenix 
Foundry, Dublin, and in 1814 he made his way to Manchester, where he 
settled as a working millwright under Mr. Adam Parkinson. After two years 
he married, and commenced business on his own account, one of his first 
efforts at engineering designing being the plans for an iron bridge over the 
River Irwell, at Blackfriars. Fairbairn gradually rose to a position of 
eminence, and in’1831 he construéted one of the earliest examples of iron 
ship-building, the success of which led to the establishment of the well- 
known works at Millwall. He was engaged with Robert Stephenson in 
designing and constructing the Britannia Tubular Bridge. In course of time 
the firm of which Sir William was the leading partner was turned into a 
Limited Liability Company, and one of the latest works of importance turned 
out by it was the construction of the iron forts for the defence of Spithead. 
GEOLOGY. 
Glacial Geology.—The glaciation of the South-West of England has lately 
attracted some attention. Mr. Croll, speaking of the Great Baltic glacier, 
ooo or 2000 feet in thickness, is of opinion that if it be admitted that it 
passed over Denmark,—and of this there is good geological evidence,—then it 
is hardly possible to escape the conclusion that a portion of it at least passed 
across the South of England, entering the Atlantic in the direction of the 
Bristol Channel. Mr. W. C. Lucy has detected Glacial strie on a mass of 
sandstone near Porlock. Mr. H. B. Woodward has recorded the occurrence 
of Boulder Clay near Yarcombe, on the Black Down hills. Looking to the 
nature of the deposits found on these hills, he thinks that their formation may 
be attributed to marine action during the glacial submergence, with the 
assistance of an occasional iceberg to bring the foreign material (quartz and 
quartzite) which is mixed with the flint and chert drift. 
Mr. T. F. Jamieson has arranged the Glacial phenomena of Scotland under 
three heads:—(r), the great early glaciation by land-ice; (2), the period of 
glacial marine beds containing remains of Arétic Mollusca, when most of the 
country was covered by the sea; (3), the time of the late glaciers, the special 
subject of the paper. He described this last period as one not of mere local 
glaciers, but as characterised by a return of a great ice-sheet over nearly the 
whole of Scotland and Ireland; and he stated that this ice-sheet was probably 
neither so thick, so extensive, nor so enduring as that of the first period of 
glaciation, which cleared away everything in the shape of superficial deposits 
down to the hard rock. He believed, however, that in the last period the 
mountains of Scotland and Wales, as well as the Pennine range and the rest 
of the North of England as far as Derby, were covered with thick ice, which 
in most parts reached down to the sea, and that extensive snow-beds prevailed 
over the rest of England. In the summer months the melting of these would 
give rise to streams of muddy water, and produce the superficial deposits of 
brick earth, warp, and loess; whilst, when the currents were stronger, perhaps 
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