xlvi Proceedings of Boyal Society of Edinhurgh. 
General Robert Maclagan, R.E. By Major-General Sir 
Robert Murdoch Smith, K.C.M.G., R.E. 
(Read January 21, 1895.) 
General Robert Maclagan of the Royal (late Bengal) Engineers, 
who was horn in Edinhurgh on the 14th December 1820, was the 
third son of Dr David Maclagan, Physician to the Forces and 
Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the Queen in Scotland. He was educated 
at the High School and at the University of his native city. 
Subsequently, after the usual course of instruction at the East 
India Company’s Military College at Addiscomhe, where he greatly 
distinguished himself, he received his first commission as a Second 
Lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers in December 1839. Like 
other young Engineer officers, he thereupon underwent a thorough 
course of practical training at the Royal Engineer Establishment, 
Chatham, now designated the School of Military Engineering, 
before proceeding to India to enter on the active duties of his 
profession. It may not be amiss to point out that, in all proba- 
bility, much of the thoroughness and versatility which characterised 
his subsequent career was due to the nature of his early training, 
viz., a good school and university curriculum under home influences, 
followed by two years’ theoretical, and two years’ practical, instruc- 
tion in the special subjects appertaining to the duties of a military 
engineer. This happy sequence of literary, scientific, and practical 
pursuits undoubtedly helped, in large measure, to prepare him for 
the varied eventualities of his future career. 
Arriving in India, he was appointed to the Bengal Sappers and 
Miners, the headquarters of which corps he joined at Delhi in 
March 1842, while the British and Indian forces were still engaged 
in avenging our previous disasters in Afghanistan. From Delhi he 
marched in the same year in command of a company to Firozpur, 
where he joined the army of reserve held in readiness to support 
the army in the field under Sir Frederick Pollock. On the safe 
