Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/185

 Garden,’ ran through several editions. In 1817 Neill, with two other deputies from the Caledonian Society, made a tour through the Netherlands and the north of France, and he prepared an account of it, which was published in 1823.

Edinburgh is indebted to Neill for the scheme of the West Princes Street gardens. In 1820 that portion of the north loch was drained, and five acres of ground were laid out and planted with seventy-seven thousand trees and shrubs under his direction; it was also due to his public spirit that several antiquities were preserved when on the point of being demolished.

His residence at Canonmills Cottage, near the city, was always open to visitors who cared for those pursuits in which Neill took an especial interest, and his garden was noted for the character of the collection and its high cultivation. A short time before his death he became enfeebled by a stroke of paralysis, and after several months of suffering he died at Canonmills on 3 Sept. 1851, and was buried in the cemetery at Warriston, Edinburgh. His tombstone states that he was ‘distinguished for literature, science, patriotism, benevolence, and piety.’

He was fellow of the Linnean and Edinburgh Royal Societies, and honorary LL.D. of Edinburgh University. He died unmarried, and among his various charitable bequests was one of 500l. to the Caledonian Horticultural Society to found a medal for distinguished Scottish botanists or cultivators, and a similar sum to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for a medal to distinguished Scottish naturalists. He is botanically commemorated by the rosaceous genus Neillia.



NEILSON, JAMES BEAUMONT (1792–1865), inventor of the hot blast in the iron manufacture, was born on 22 June 1792 at Shettleston, a village near Glasgow. His father, Walter Neilson, originally a laborious and scantily paid millwright, became ultimately engine-wright at the Govan coal works, near Glasgow; his mother, whose maiden name was Marion Smith, was a woman of capacity and an excellent housewife. Neilson's education was of an elementary kind, and completed before he was fourteen. His first employment was to drive a condensing engine which his father had set up, and on leaving school he was for two years a ‘gig-boy’ on a winding-engine at the Govan colliery. Showing a turn for mechanics, he was then apprenticed to his elder brother John, an engineman at Oakbank, near Glasgow, who drove a small engine, and acted as his brother's fireman. Some attempts by the two brothers at field preaching came to an end through the opposition of his father, and John devoted his leisure to repairing the deficiencies of his early education. His apprenticeship finished, Neilson worked for a time as a journeyman to his brother, who rose to some eminence as an engineer, and who is said to have designed and constructed the first iron steamer that went to sea. At two-and-twenty Neilson was appointed, with a salary of from 70l. to 80l., engine-wright of a colliery at Irvine, in the working of which he made various improvements. A year later he married Barbara Montgomerie, who belonged to Irvine. She brought him a dowry of 250l., which enabled them to live when the failure of his Irvine master threw him out of employment, and they migrated to Glasgow. Here, at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed foreman of the Glasgow gasworks, the first of the kind to be established in the city. At the end of five years he became manager and engineer of the works, and remained connected with them for thirty years. Into both the manufacture and the utilisation of gas he introduced several important improvements, among them the employment of clay retorts, the use of sulphate of iron as a purifier, and the swallow-tail jet, which came into general use. In these early successes as an inventor he was aided by the new knowledge of physical and chemical science which he acquired as a diligent student at the Andersonian University, Glasgow. At the same time he was exerting himself zealously for the mental and technical improvement of the workmen under him, most of whom, Highlanders and Irishmen, could not even read. By degrees he overcame their reluctance to be taught, and, with the aid of the directors of the gas company, he succeeded in establishing a thriving workman's institution, with a library, lecture-room, laboratory, and workshop. In 1825 the popularity of the institute rendered enlargement of the building necessary, and Neilson delivered an excellent address to its members, which was published.

It was about this time that he was led to the inquiries which resulted in the discovery of the value of the hot blast in the iron manufacture. The conception was en-