582 Obituary— John Young, LL.R, F.G.S. 



JOHN YOUNG, LL.D., F.G.S. 



Born 1823. Died March 13, 1900. 



John Young was born at Lennoxtown, in the parish of Campsie, 

 1823, His father, Thomas Young, was employed in the wright- 

 shop of Lennox Mill, the bleaching-field and calico-printing works 

 of Dalglish, Falconer, & Co. When 10 years old he was taken 

 from school to be a message-boy in the Bleachfield. This was 

 before the employment of children was ameliorated and regulated 

 by the Legislature ; and then he was taken on in the Mill, where 

 16 hours a day (at sixpence a day and a penny an hour for over- 

 work), whether in the hot or cold works (both extreme), were more 

 than he could bear ; and his mother took him away. Afterwards he 

 was apprenticed for seven years to print-cutting. 



He was in the employment of the firm for 26 years, until he went 

 to live in Glasgow in 1859, but before then he utilized what little 

 time his hard work allowed him for study, attending the Mechanics 

 Institute and reading what books he could get to see on Geology, 

 his favourite science, and becoming well known among geologists. 



In 1856 the British Association met at Glasgow, under the presi- 

 dency of the Duke of Argyll, and a collection of the rocks and fossils 

 of the West of Scotland was to be an important feature at the meeting. 

 Mr. Eobert Dalglish, partner in-the Bleachworks, etc., knew of John 

 Young's geological taste and competence, and arranged to let his 

 employe go to Glasgow to superintend and classify the collection. 

 For five months he was engaged on this work, and was brought into 

 contact with some of the leading geologists of the time. So thoroughly 

 qualified was he for this task, that shortly afterwards the Senatus 

 of Glasgow University offered him the position of Keeper of the 

 Hunterian Museum. In 1859 he removed to Glasgow with his wife 

 and young family, and entered on his new duties, living at the Old 

 College in the High Street of Glasgow. 



He successfully fulfilled an onerous duty when the College of 

 Glasgow was removed from the High Street to Gilmorehill. He 

 carefully packed and removed the thousands of specimens — patho- 

 logical, physiological, and antiquarian— contained in the Hunterian 

 Museum, arranging and classifying them in their new location, with 

 the co-operation of his colleague, Professor John Young, M.D., the 

 Head Keeper of the Museum. 



The Campsie district in Stirlingshire, between Glasgow and 

 Stirling, especially around Lennoxtown, his birthplace (about 

 seven miles north-east of Glasgow), had always attracted John 

 Young ; indeed, at an early period he studied its features and its 

 geological structure assiduously and with success. He made himself 

 acquainted with all the natural and artificial exposures of its rocks 

 and strata, learning the mineralogical nature of the greenstones 

 and ash-beds of the trap-formation, and the fossil contents of the 

 sedimentary limestones, shales, and sandstones, some of which, 

 equivalent to the " Calciferous Sandstone Series," are intercalated 

 with the trappean rocks. 



