196 Bibliographical Notices. 
Life of Sir W. E. Logan.. By Bernarp J. Harrineron. 8vo. 
Pp. 432. London: Sampson Low and Co., 1883. 
In this interesting volume the author has done good service by 
bringing together from many sources, and connecting into a con- 
tinuous narrative, details of the life and work of one of the most 
devoted and single-hearted of British scientific men and public 
servants. We gather from the preface that the author’s task was 
not self-imposed, and that he to a certain extent laboured under the 
disadvantage of not having known Sir William Logan in the earlier 
years of his work in Canada; but having undertaken the work, he 
has endeavoured to bring together such of Sir William’s own words 
as will recall him to the minds and hearts of old friends, or enable 
those who were not privileged with his acquaintance to form an 
estimate of his character and work; and these objects he may be 
considered as having fairly accomplished, 
William Edward, the third child and second of the five sons of 
William and Janet Logan, was born at Montreal on the 20th April 
1798, and after receiving his early schooling from Mr. Alexander 
Skakel, a determined Scotchman thoroughly well acquainted with 
the art of flogging, but a good classical scholar and successful 
teacher, was in 1814 sent with his elder brother to the High School 
of Edinburgh, then in the zenith of its reputation. In 1817 he 
became a student of the University, receiving the first prize in 
mathematics, ‘“‘ with the goodwill of all the competitors,” at the 
end of his single session at College, when his university career was 
brought to a sudden close by a resolution to enter into commercial 
life. He was received into the office of his uncle, Mr. Hart Logan, 
in London; and for the following thirteen years his life was that of 
a city man, with occasional holidays passed in France and Scotland. 
In 1831, his uncle having become interested in a process for smelting 
copper furnace-slags, William Logan undertook the business manage- 
ment of the works at Morriston, near Swansea; and it was during 
his residence in Wales, extending over the period 1831-87, that the 
true bent of his genius towards stratigraphical geology first became 
apparent in the remarkable map of the South-Wales coal-field, laid 
down upon the then recently completed sheets of the one-inch Ord- 
nance map of the district, which was exhibited at the meeting of the 
British Association at Liverpool in 1837. This, when subsequently 
incorporated by Sir Henry de la Beche into the maps of the Geological 
Survey, formed the standard for mapping the details of the other 
coal-fields in the kingdom. Another valuable service rendered as 
a volunteer by Logan to the Geological Survey was the introduction 
of the large sections on the uniform scale of six inches to the mile, 
which have been invariably used subsequently. In 1837 he was 
elected a Fellow of the Geological Society, and in 1840 contributed 
to its ‘ Transactions’ an important paper ‘‘On the Underclays of 
the Coal-seams of South Wales,” which he showed, from the inyari- 
able presence in them of the roots of Stigmaria, to be the soils upon 
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