138 
the India Office for several years, after which he was engineer to 
the South London Tramways Company, and under his superintend- 
ence the various lines of that company were constructed. He died 
on 27th November 1884. He was elected a member of the Institu- 
tion of Civil Engineers in 1880, and a Eellow of this Society on 6th 
June 1881. 
John M‘Naik. By T. Stevenson, P.R.S.A. 
John M‘Nair was for nearly twenty years a Eellow of the Royal 
Society of Edinburgh. He took a lively interest in physical subjects, 
but owing to his advanced age, and the latterly feeble state of his 
health, was prevented from attending our meetings very regularly. 
He was born at Belvidere, near Glasgow, in 1801, and died at 
Edinburgh in his eighty-fifth year. 
William Lindsay Alexander By Professor Flint. 
William Lindsay Alexander was born at Leith on 24th August 
1808. He was educated at the High School of his native town and 
in the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. He distin- 
guished himself in all his classes, but especially in those of Latin, 
Greek, Logic, and Moral Philosophy. While at St Andrews his 
earlier religious impressions were much deepened by intercourse 
with a pious fellow-student, and through the inspiring influence of 
Dr Chalmers. Although he began preaching when still a student 
of Arts, it was not until 1832, five years after he had left college, 
that he made choice of the Christian ministry as his profession. 
Teaching, literature, law, medicine, all presented themselves to him 
with competing claims. During the greater portion of this period 
of indecision and unsettlement he was occupied as classical tutor 
in the Congregational Academy at Blackburn. Passing through 
Liverpool in 1832, he was persuaded to occupy for a Sunday the 
pulpit of Newington Street Independent Chapel, then vacant. The 
result was that he remained in charge of the congregation for a 
