Abstract
REFERENCE was made in NATURE of May 1, p. 630, to the life and work of Major-General William Roy. It is stated in the note in question that Roy entered the army at twenty years of age; his own statement is that a “body of infantry was encamped at Fort Augustus in 1747”, when he was twenty-one, and that “as Assistant Quarter-Master it fell to my lot to begin the execution of that map”. It appears that he held a minor position in the Post Office at Edinburgh until 1747. As to the date of his joining the army, Mr. George Macdonald, in his valuable study “General William Roy and his Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain”, published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1917, states that it is quite possible that Roy was not in the army at all during the construction of the map of Scotland. All that we know for certain on this point is that Roy was appointed Practitioner Engineer on December 23, 1755.
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CLOSE, C. Major-General William Roy. Nature 117, 824 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117824b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117824b0
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