of Edinburgh , Session 1879-80. 
329 
The minds of most men stiffen with age, and after a certain period 
the faculty of reception in most disappears. It was evidently not 
so with Professor Kelland. 
Alexander James Adie, Esq. By David Stevenson, 
M.I.C.E. 
Alexander James Adie, Civil Engineer, son of the late Alexander 
Adie, F.R.S.E., the eminent optician, was born in Edinburgh in 
1808. A course of study at the High School, and afterwards at the 
University of Edinburgh, prepared him for entering on an appren- 
ticeship under Mr James Jardine, Civil Engineer, with whom he 
was afterwards associated in carrying out various "works. 
In 1836 he became Resident Engineer of the Bolton, Chorley, and 
Preston Railway, and communicated some interesting papers to 
the Institution of Civil Engineers regarding that work, particularly 
one on Skew Bridges. 
On leaving Lancashire he removed to Glasgow to take charge 
of some of the colliery railways there, and ultimately became 
engineer and manager of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, 
which post he resigned about 1863. 
Mr Adie made a series of important experiments on the expansion 
of stone by heat, which he communicated to the Society in his 
paper entitled “The Expansion of Different Kinds of Stone from 
an Increase of Temperature, with a Description of the Pyrometer used 
in making the Experiments,” which is published in vol. xiii. of the 
Transactions. 
Mr Adie was elected a Member of the Society in 1846. He 
latterly retired to reside at Rockville, near Linlithgow, where he 
had an opportunity of cultivating his taste for horticulture and the 
fine arts, and of receiving visits from many who esteemed his friend- 
ship, and valued his accomplishments. 
John Blackwood, Esq. By Principal Sir Alex. Grant, Bart. 
John Blackwood, who died on the 29th October last, was for a 
long period one of the most widely known and highly esteemed 
worthies of Scotland. As head of the last remaining of the great 
