and was present at Sedan; and he also went through the Turco-Servian War of 1876. He became in this way an authority on gun-shot wounds, and besides being highly successful as a surgeon was very popular in society, his magnificent physique and Irish temperament making him a notable and attractive personality. In 1881 he was appointed assistant-surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, and for twenty years continued his work there as surgeon, lecturer and consulting surgeon. In 1881 he acted as honorary secretary-general of the International Medical Congress in London, and was knighted for his services. In 1883 he was elected member of the council of the College of Surgeons, and in 1887 a member of the court of examiners; in 1893 he delivered the Bradshaw lecture, and in 1896 was elected president, being re-elected to this office in 1897, 1898, 1899, and 1900 (the centenary year of the college), an unprecedented record. In 1897 he was created a baronet, and appointed surgeon-in-ordinary to the prince of Wales. In 1899 he was Hunterian Orator. In the same year he volunteered to go out to South Africa as consulting surgeon to the forces, and from November 1899 to April 1900 he saw much active service both in Cape Colony and Natal, his assistance being cordially acknowledged on his return. In 1901 he was appointed honorary serjeant-surgeon to the king. But during 1898 he had suffered from a prolonged illness, and he had perhaps put too much strain on his strength, for on the 4th of December 1901 he died somewhat suddenly at Bath. Besides treatises on Surgical Operations and Antiseptic Surgery, and numerous contributions to the medical journals, MacCormac was the author of Work under the Red Cross and of an interesting volume commemorating the centenary of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1900. The latter contains biographical notices of all the masters and presidents up to that date.
McCORMICK, CYRUS HALL (1809–1884), American inventor
of grain-harvesting machinery, was born at Walnut Grove, in
what is now Roane county, W. Va., U.S.A., on the 15th of February
1809. His father was a farmer who had invented numerous
labour-saving devices for farmwork, but after repeated efforts
had failed in his attempts to construct a successful grain-cutting
machine. In 1831, Cyrus, then twenty-two years old, took
up the problem, and after careful study constructed a machine
which was successfully employed in the late harvest of 1831 and
patented in 1834. The McCormick reaper after further improvements
proved a complete success; and in 1847 the inventor
removed to Chicago, where he established large works for manufacturing
his agricultural machines. William H. Seward has
said of McCormick’s invention, that owing to it “the line of
civilization moves westward thirty miles each year.” Numerous
prizes and medals were awarded for his reaper, and he was
elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of
Sciences, “as having done more for the cause of agriculture than any other living man.” He died in Chicago on the 13th of May 1884.
See Herbert N. Casson, Cyrus Hall McCormick: his Life and Work (Chicago, 1909).
McCOSH, JAMES (1811–1894), Scottish philosophical writer,
was born of a Covenanting family in Ayrshire, on the 1st of
April 1811. He studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh, receiving
at the latter university his M.A., at the suggestion of Sir William
Hamilton, for an essay on the Stoic philosophy. He became
a minister of the Established Church of Scotland, first at Arbroath
and then at Brechin, and took part in the Free Church movement
of 1843. In 1852 he was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics
in Queen’s College, Belfast; and in 1868 was chosen
president and professor of philosophy of the college of New
Jersey, at Princeton. He resigned the presidency in 1888,
but continued as lecturer on philosophy till his death on
the 16th of November 1894. He was most successful in college
administration, a good lecturer and an effective preacher. His
general philosophical attitude and method were Hamiltonian;
he insisted on severing religious and philosophical data from
merely physical, and though he added little to original thought,
he clearly restated and vigorously used the conclusions of
others. In his controversial writings he often failed to understand
the real significance of the views which he attacked, and
much of his criticism is superficial.
His chief works are: Method of Divine Government, Physical and Moral (Edinburgh, 1850, 5th ed., 1856, and frequently republished in New York); The Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation (Edinburgh, 1855; new editions, New York, 1867–1880); Intuitions of the Mind inductively investigated (London and New York, 1860; 3rd rev. ed., 1872); An Examination of Mr J. S. Mill’s Philosophy (London and New York, 1866; enlarged 1871, several eds.); Philosophical Papers containing (1) “Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Logic,” (2) “Reply to Mr Mill’s third edition,” and (3) “Present State of Moral Philosophy in Britain;” Religious Aspects of Evolution (New York, 1888, 2nd ed., 1890). For a complete list of his writings see J. H. Dulles, McCosh Bibliography (Princeton, 1895).
McCOY, SIR FREDERICK (1823–1899), British palaeontologist,
the son of Dr Simon McCoy, was born in Dublin in 1823,
and was educated in that city for the medical profession. His
interests, however, became early centred in natural history,
and especially in geology, and at the age of eighteen he published
a Catalogue of Organic Remains compiled from specimens
exhibited in the Rotunda at Dublin (1841). He assisted Sir
R. J. Griffith (q.v.) by studying the fossils of the carboniferous
and silurian rocks of Ireland, and they prepared a joint Synopsis
of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland (1846). In 1846 Sedgwick
secured his services, and for at least four years he devoted
himself to the determination and arrangement of the fossils
in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. Sedgwick wrote
of him as “an excellent naturalist, an incomparable and most
philosophical palaeontologist, and one of the steadiest and
quickest workmen that ever undertook the arrangement of a
museum” (Life and Letters of Sedgwick, ii. 194). Together
they prepared the important and now classic work entitled
A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palaeozoic
Rocks, with a Systematic Description of the British Palaeozoic
Fossils in the Geological Museum of the University of Cambridge
(1855). Meanwhile McCoy in 1850 had been appointed professor
of geology in Queen’s College, Belfast, and in 1854 he
accepted the newly founded professorship of natural science in
the university of Melbourne. There he lectured for upwards
of thirty years; he established the National Museum of Natural
History and Geology in Melbourne, of which he was director;
and becoming associated with the geological survey of Victoria
as palaeontologist, he issued a series of decades entitled Prodromus
of the Palaeontology of Victoria. He also issued the
Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria. To local societies he
contributed many papers, and he continued his active scientific
work for fifty-eight years—his last contribution, “Note on a new
Australian Pterygotus,” being printed in the Geological Magazine
for May 1899. He was elected F.R.S. in 1880, and was one
of the first to receive the Hon. D.Sc. from the university of
Cambridge. In 1886 he was made C.M.G., and in 1891 K.C.M.G.
He died in Melbourne on the 16th of May 1899.
Obituary (with bibliography) in Geol. Mag. 1899, p. 283.
M‘CRIE, THOMAS (1772–1835), Scottish historian and divine, was born at Duns in Berwickshire in November 1772. He studied in Edinburgh University, and in 1796 he was ordained minister of the Second Associate Congregation, Edinburgh. In 1806, however, with some others M‘Crie seceded from the “general associate synod,” and formed the “constitutional associate presbytery,” afterwards merged in the “original seceders.” He was consequently deposed by the associate synod, and his congregation withdrew with him and built another place of worship in which he officiated until his death. M‘Crie devoted himself to investigations into the history, constitution and polity of the churches of the Reformation; and the first-fruits of his study were given to the public in November 1811 as The Life of John Knox, containing Illustrations of the History of the Reformation in Scotland, which procured for the author the degree of D.D. from Edinburgh University, an honour conferred then for the first time upon a Scottish dissenting minister. This work, of great learning and value, exercised an important influence on public opinion at the time.
