Defences of the Niagara Frontier (1764-1870) : An Historical Survey of Fort George, Fort Erie & Fort Mississauga

The intention of the Niagara Parks Commission to undertake restorations of Fort George, Fort Mississauga and Fort Erie has inspired this survey. The aim has not been to create an historical narrative - so many already exist - but rather to present an accurate description of the original appearance, structure and design of each of the Niagara Forts. This it is hoped may be of some practical assistance to those in charge of the actual work of restoration. In the case of Fort Mississauga which was maintained as a military post until 1857, vary complete information has been available. Fort George and Fort Erie were abandoned for military purposes after the War of 1812 and fewer plans and contemporary accounts have survived. While the work of research, involving the collection of every possible plan of the works and every drawing of their appearance as well as the piecing together of material, has been more difficult in the case of the latter forts, it is felt that the essential information has been secured. The use of a number of military terms in the description of the fortifications has been unavoidable and a glossary of these is included on page 66. The list of plans and illustrations is as complete as possible.

The SHIVir Survey: A Dynamical Catalogue of Virgo Cluster Galaxies and their Scaling Relations

By virtue of its proximity and richness, the Virgo galaxy cluster is a perfect testing ground to expand our understanding of structure formation in the Universe. Here, we present a comprehensive dynamical catalogue based on 190 Virgo cluster galaxies (VCGs) in the "Spectroscopy and H-band Imaging of the Virgo cluster" (SHIVir) survey, including kinematics and dynamical masses. Spectroscopy collected over a multi-year campaign on 4-8m telescopes was joined with optical and near-infrared imaging to create a cosmologically-representative overview of parameter distributions and scaling relations describing galaxy evolution in a rich cluster environment. The use of long-slit spectroscopy has allowed the extraction and systematic analysis of resolved kinematic profiles: Halpha rotation curves for late-type galaxies (LTGs), and velocity dispersion profiles for early-type galaxies (ETGs). The latter are shown to span a wide range of profile shapes which correlate with structural, morphological, and photometric parameters. A study of the distributions of surface brightnesses and circular velocities for ETGs and LTGs considered separately show them all to be strongly bimodal, hinting at the existence of dynamically unstable modes where the baryon and dark matter fractions may be comparable within the inner regions of galaxies. Both our Tully-Fisher relation for LTGs and Fundamental Plane analysis for ETGs exhibit the smallest scatter when a velocity metric probing the galaxy at larger radii (where the baryonic fraction becomes sub-dominant) is used: rotational velocity measured in the outer disc at the 23.5 i-mag arcsec^{-2} level, and velocity dispersion measured within an aperture of 2 effective radii, respectively. Dynamical estimates for gas-poor and gas-rich VCGs are merged into a joint analysis of the stellar-to-total mass relation (STMR), stellar TFR, and Mass-Size relation. These relations are all found to contain strong bimodalities or dichotomies between the ETG and LTG samples, alluding to a "mixed scenario'' evolutionary sequence between morphological/dynamical classes that involves both quenching and dry mergers. The unmistakable differentiation between these two galaxy classes appears robust against different classification schemes, and supports the notion that they are driven by different evolutionary histories. Future observations using integral field spectroscopy and including lower-mass galaxies should solidify this hypothesis.