xlviii Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinhurgh. 
Smith, E.E., for the defence of the European community in and 
around Eurki. The college buildings were put into a state of 
defence, and the pupils organised into such an efficient garrison, 
that the mutineers thought it prudent to let them alone. What 
might otherwise have proved a second Cawnpore was thus happily 
averted. Throughout that trying and critical period Maclagan’s 
conduct was spoken of by those who were present as beyond all 
praise. 
In 1861 Maclagan, now a Lieutenant-Colonel, was appointed 
Chief Engineer and Secretary in the Public Works Department to 
the Government of the Punjab, in which appointment he remained 
until his retirement from the service in January 1879, after 
attaining the rank of General. During his long administration of 
the Public Works Department in the Punjab, much was done in 
the making of roads, railways, and canals, and in the erection of 
barracks and other public buildings, towards the development of 
the resources and the permanent security of what in many respects 
is the most important province of the Indian Empire. 
In retiring from the public service. General Maclagan merely 
exchanged one field of activity for another. In the Proceedings of 
the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was a Member of Council, 
and in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, he found 
scope for his literary tastes and researches, more especially in 
subjects connected with the East; while his continued interest in 
science was evidenced by his Fellowship of the Eoyal Society of 
Edinburgh, and of the Eoyal Geographical Society of London, of 
which latter, for a number of years, he wsls a most efficient Member 
of Council. It was, however, on work of a missionary and philan- 
thropic nature that his heart was chiefly set. On it he spared 
neither time, money, nor labour, and whatever his hand found to 
do in its furtherance he did it with his might. 
In every relation of life, public and private, he exemplified, as 
few men have done, the apostolic definition of charity, which reads 
almost like a categorical description of the character, temper, and 
disposition of Eobert Maclagan. 
