286 THE EDINBURGH PROFESSORS 



for the development of fertile seed, citing cases of seed-pro- 

 duction where no application of the " dust " from the stamens 

 was possible thus early recognising conditions which puzzled 

 botanists for many generations afterwards and until the ex- 

 planation of apogamy was supplied. One is tempted to wonder 

 whether if the Linnaean system had not received the appellation 

 " sexual " it would have roused the same condemnation from 

 him as it did. 



From his published work, notabjy the Dissertation on Botany 

 (1754) a translation of a portion of his earlier Tirocinium 

 Botaniciim Edinburgense (1740), as also from some MS. of his 

 lectures which still exist, we recognise the clearness and vigour 

 of mind of Alston, and the precision of the man is made 

 abundantly evident in the beautiful copper-plate writing in old 

 script of his MS. Page after page is filled without blot or 

 correction, and the whole systematised and arranged without 

 flaw. Anatomical questions were dealt with by him in con- 

 sonance with the knowledge of the time, mainly resting on 

 Malpighi ; but there is no rational treatment of physiological 

 subjects, and this is the more surprising inasmuch as he was 

 in intimate correspondence with Hales, and ought to have been 

 acquainted with the fundamental experimental work of that 

 physiologist. It may be that the fragments of record from 

 which we have to judge are insufficient for correct appraisement, 

 but on all the evidence we possess we must conclude that the 

 two volumes of his Materia Medica give us a picture of the 

 direction of his teaching, and that Botany in the hands of its 

 leading expositor in Edinburgh was at this period only a hand- 

 maid to Medicine. 



The advent of Alston's successor, John Hope, was the dawn 

 of new things. The influence of the work of Hales had 

 reached Edinburgh. Comparatively few botanists of to-day 

 have heard the name of John Hope otherwise than as that of a 

 correspondent of Linnaeus and protagonist in this country of 

 his system of classification, for these are the claims to distinc- 

 tion assigned to him by the historians of British Botany; and 

 if one reckons the value of a man's life-work in science by his 

 published writings alone, that of John Hope would be a minimum ; 



