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50-feet span, and four of 30-feet span, as his greatest work. The 
rails of that viaduct are 150 feet above the Eiver Lugar. 
Mr Miller retired from the profession of Civil Engineer in 1850. 
In 1868 he was returned to Parliament as one of the members for 
the city of Edinburgh, but lost his seat at the General Election in 
1874. He purchased the estates of Leithenhopes in Peeblesshire, 
and Drumlithie in Kincardineshire, and devoted a great part of his 
time to improving them. He died on the 8th May 1883. 
Mr Miller at the time of his death was Senior Member of the 
Institution of Civil Engineers, and was elected a Fellow of this 
Society in 1841. 
Charles Adolph Wurtz. 
Charles Adolph Wurtz was born on November 26, 1817, at 
Wolfheim, in Alsace. He studied at the University of Strasburg, 
where he completed the medical curriculum by taking the Doctor’s 
degree in 1843. From Strasburg he went to Paris, where he 
occupied several positions successively, until he became in 1883 
Professor at the Ecole de Medicine; and in 1866 he was made 
Dean of the Faculty. In 1867 he was elected member de l’lnstitut, 
in preference to Berthelot, who was his only serious opponent. He 
died on the 12th May 1884, having only three weeks previously 
pronounced a brilliant and affectionate eloge at the tomb of his 
great master Dumas, whose successor as perpetual Secretary of the 
Academy he was, on all sides, designated to be. 
Few chemists have done more or more remarkable work than 
Wurtz. His first publication is on the nature of hypophosphorous 
acid, which he explained ; and in the course of his studies on the 
compounds of phosphorus he discovered the oxychloride. In hydride 
of copper he discovered the first definite combination of hydrogen 
with a metallic body. In 1848 he made perhaps his most import- 
ant discovery, namely, that of the compound ammonias, which did 
so much to assist in establishing the type-theory of his countryman 
and contemporary Gerhardt. It was extended by his discovery of 
glycol and the consequent introduction of the idea of polyatomic 
alcohols. The controversy on the constitution of lactic acid, in 
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