chess and Columbia Counties, the pioneer of Agricultural
Societies in New York. James Renwick (1790-1862), born in Liverpool of
Scottish parents, was Professor of Physics in Columbia University,
author of several scientific works, and one of the Commissioners who
laid out the early boundary line of the Province of New Brunswick. His
mother was the Jeannie Jaffray of several of Burns's poems. James
Renwick, the architect, was his son. Other gifted sons were Edward
Sabine Renwick and Henry Brevoort Renwick. Joseph Henry (1797-1878),
the "Nestor of American Science," and organizer of the American
Academy of Sciences otherwise the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, was of Scottish' origin. His paternal and maternal
grandparents emigrated from Scotland together and are said to have
landed the day before the Battle of Bunker Hill. The McAllisters of
Philadelphia (father and son) were famous as makers of optical and
mathematical instruments, and the son was the first to study and fit
astigmatic lenses, and was also the introducer of the system of
numbering buildings according to the numbers of the streets, assigning
one hundred numbers to each block. Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-87),
Naturalist and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was also of
Scottish origin. His works, including scientific papers, number over
one thousand titles. Carlile Pollock Patterson (1816-81) did much to
develop the United States Coast Survey. William Paterson Turnbull
(1830-71), ornithologist, author of the "Birds of East Pennsylvania
and New Jersey," a model of patient and accurate research, was born at
Fala, near Edinburgh. Edward Duncan Montgomery, biologist and
philosopher, was born in Edinburgh in 1835. Marshall MacDonald
(1835-95), ichthyologist, pisciculturist, and inventor, engineer in
charge of the siege of Vicksburg during the Civil War, and inventor of
automatic hatching jars, was the grandson of a Scottish immigrant.
Peter Smith Michie (1839-1901), soldier and scientist, born in
Brechin, Forfarshire, graduated from West Point in 1863, served as
Engineer in the Federal Army, and was afterwards Professor of Natural
and Experimental Philosophy at West Point. William Healey Dall (b.
1845), palaeontologist to the United States Geological Survey, author
of "Alaska and Its Resources," and author of hundreds of articles on
Natural History subjects, was a grandson of William Dall of
Forfarshire. Thomas Harrison Montgomery (1873-1912), s