Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/177

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CANALS OF IRRIGATION
169

accordance with the suggestion of the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Charles Napier), to add a printing press, also a geological museum, a professional library, and a depôt of surveying and mathematical instruments, — and for these purposes to erect new buildings.

'Mr. Thomason wrote a detailed minute, dated October 3, 1851, explanatory of the past working of the College, and of his proposals for its extension. At the beginning of his printed copy he wrote: "This pamphlet was compiled by myself, and much of the information it contains was drawn from private sources. The completion of the plan which is here sketched out may perhaps devolve upon others, and I am desirous that some record remain of the data on which I found my conclusions. In this interleaved copy will be found references to the private notes and other sources from which the materials were drawn." The occasion came for this memorandum to serve its purpose, and his plans for the College were carried out in every particular.'

In 1872, that is twenty years after its establishment, Sir William Muir visited the College as Lieutenant-Governor, and addressed the students. After reminding them that Thomason had had embodied in his prospectus a sketch of the building as it was to be, he adds: —

'It was one of my earliest acts as his Secretary to affix my name to the prospectus, with the intimation that it had been cordially sanctioned by the Court of Directors. In looking back to the origin of the College, we may well do so with an ever affectionate remembrance of its Founder.'