After being trained for the ministry at Manchester New College (1843–1848), he became pastor of Friargate chapel, Derby, until 1852, when he accepted charge of a Unitarian congregation in Glasgow.
He became an authority on glacial geology, and wrote much, especially in conjunction with David Robertson, on the Quaternary fossiliferous beds of Scotland (Trans.
[2] He also prepared for the British Association a valuable series of Reports (1873–1892) on the erratic Blocks of England, Wales and Ireland.
In conjunction with David Robertson and George Stewardson Brady (1832–1921) he wrote the Monograph of the Post Tertiary Entomostraca of Scotland, etc.
for the Palaeontographical Society (1874); and he edited Henry Carvill Lewis's Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, issued posthumously (1894).