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of Edinburgh , Session 1806 - 67 . 
when, so early as 1824, he predicted the great success of railway 
travelling, and spoke of locomotion at the rate of twenty-four miles 
an hour, or quicker than a race-horse, as a very probable event. 
Science, however, has outstripped the tardy estimate of our author, 
and the still tardier one of George Stephenson. A flight of sixty 
miles an hour with a cargo heavier then a ship of war, which many 
of us have made, would have shaken the nerves even of these 
sanguine speculators. When we learn that a distinguished man of 
science announced in the “ Edinburgh Review” the impossibility of 
navigating the Atlantic by steam, we need not wonder at the slow- 
coach convictions of the uneducated world. 
Mr Maclaren was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1837, and of 
the Geological Society of London in 1846. He was an active 
member of the British Association, and for the two last years he 
was President of the Geological Society of Edinburgh. 
After resigning the editorship of the Scotsman , he retired to his 
villa of Moreland Cottage, near Edinburgh, where he spent the 
rest of his life. His health was generally good, and his mental 
powers unimpared, when on the morning of the 27th August he 
experienced a stroke of paralysis, which carried him off without 
suffering on the 10th of September 1866, in the 84th year of his 
age. 
William Whewell, D.D., F.R.S., a distinguished writer on 
almost every branch of science, was born at Lancaster on the 24th 
of May 1794. He was the son of a house carpenter, whose little 
library supplied the first books which excited the literary ambition 
of his son. From the Grammar School of Lancaster he went to 
Hevenham, in order to be qualified for holding an Exhibition at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. After gaining this Exhibition of £50 
a-year, he commenced residence at Cambridge, and distinguished 
himself so much that in his first year he gained a scholarship and 
a Foundation Sizarship. In the mathematical tripos of 1816 he 
graduated as second wrangler. In 1817 he was elected Fellow of 
Trinity, and soon after this he began to lecture on mathematics as 
assistant tutor, at the salary of £75 per annum. He was elected 
a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1820, and he enriched 
their Transactions from 1833 to 1840 with twelve papers, entitled 
