xi 



siveness of the Survey of Great Britain, is perhaps, considering the 

 period at which it was executed, the highest result of British practical 

 science of which this country can boast, and was the work of no 

 common men. As they have been removed one by one from among 

 us, notices of Colby, Drummond, and Portlock have appeared in our 

 pages ; Murphy was drowned in the Euphrates on Colonel Chesney's 

 Expedition ; Robe, Sir William Reid, and Dawson passed away long 

 ago. Of these General Colby was the master and tutor. Selected in 

 1824 by the discerning eye of the Duke of Wellington for the task of 

 executing the Survey of Ireland, and leaving it completed in 1846, 

 his success was what might have been expected from the well -proved 

 fertility of his inventive genius, his extraordinary force of character 

 and self-devotion, the high moral tone which was sure to propagate 

 itself amongst his staff. If others invented, enlarged, improved, 

 suggested, executed, — to Colby, the Commanderdn- Chief, the main 

 credit of the Survey must always belong. 



The only officer of: this band to whose career, as a whole, that of 

 Larcom bears any similarity, is the lamented Drummond ; but Drum- 

 mond's early death prevented the full development of talents which 

 would certainly have raised his already great fame to a still higher level 

 than it actually attained ; Larcom was permitted for a period of more 

 than forty years to become identified with what may be called his 

 adopted country ; and his memoirs would be to a very great extent a 

 history, for his period, of Ireland itself. Like Drummond, the work 

 which he accomplished on the Irish Survey pointed him out as the 

 proper person to organize and administer various branches of the Civil 

 Service ; and like him, he was made Under-Secretary for Ireland, 

 with the marked approval of the public. It is of this varied service 

 that we must make a brief sketch. 



Sir Thomas Larcom resembled Generals Colby and Portlock in one 

 respect, rather than Drummond. Like the two Generals, he was the 

 son of a distinguished sea officer ; and the sense of duty, the undaunted 

 energy, the practical sagacity which all three inherited, may very 

 clearly and very similarly be traced in their career. His father, 

 Captain Joseph Larcom, R.N., who saw much active service, was best 

 known by the office he held for some years as Commissioner of Malta 

 Dockyard, on his way home frcm which post he died in 1817. Sir 

 Thomas was born in 1801, joined the corps of Royal Engineers at 

 Chatham, with a high reputation from Woolwich, in 1821, and served 

 his first two years at Gibraltar. His early character, on its scientific 

 side, was formed under men of genius, General Mudge, R.A., the 

 successor of General Roy in the first operations of the English Survey, 

 and Sir Charles Pasley, the founder of the Engineering School at 

 Chatham. Under these officers, while learning the rudiments of his 

 profession, he imbibed his full share of that combined military and 



