GEOGRAPHY

BRYCE, Alexander A map of the North coast of Britain ... by a geometrical survey done at the desire of the Philosophical Society at Edinburgh.
[1744] Mu2- x.5

The Reverend Alexander Bryce was well known in his day as a mathematician and had some local fame as a poet. This map of the North of Scotland is inscribed to the Earl of Morton. James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton (1702-1768), was a close friend of the mathematician Colin Maclaurin and was largely responsible in 1739 for the remodelling of the Medical Society of Edinburgh into the Society for Improving Arts and Sciences. He was chosen as its first president. Morton was also a prominent Fellow of the Royal Society for thirty years, during which time he contributed several papers, mainly on astronomical topics, to its Transactions.

MACKENZIE, Murdoch Orcades: or a geographic and hydrographer survey of the Orkney and Lewis Islands.
[London : 1750] Sp Coll e120

Murdoch MacKenzie, surveyor and hydrographer, was employed before 1749 in surveying the Orkney and Shetland Islands for the Admiralty and the East India Company. He communicated his findings to the Royal Society in 1749 in a paper entitled The state of the tides in Orkney and in the following year published these charts of the area. Mackenzie later did surveys of the northern coasts of Ireland and Scotland and in 1760 published A chart of the Atlantic Ocean, drawn on a circular projection which he invented.