PHYTOLOGY, 



THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF A SCOTTISH NATURALIST, 



GEORGE DON OF FORFAR. 1 



c 



By JOHN KNOX. 



k EORGE DON, the subject of this sketch, was born in the 

 T parish of Menmuir in the year 1764. The exact date of 

 his birth cannot be ascertained, but he was baptised on the nth 

 October, as the old parochial register testifies : "nth October 

 T764, Alexander Don had a son baptised, named George." His 

 mother's name was Isobel Fairvveather. Both parents were 

 descended from respectable farmers in the parish, — the im- 

 mediate progenitor of the Dons being a Thomas Don, who came 

 from Aberdeenshire and settled in a farm in Edzell in the seven- 

 teenth century. The father of the Botanist, Alexander Don, was 

 a shoemaker, and for a few years after his marriage resided first 

 in Menmuir, and then in the neighbouring parish of Careston. 

 At last — probably about 1772 or 1773 — he came to Forfar, 

 where he had an uncle who followed the same trade as himself. 

 Here he took up his abode in the Little Causeway, a dreary 

 square off the West High Street to the south. What education, 

 in the technical sense, young Don received it is impossible to 

 say. The likelihood is that it was very scanty. In whatever 

 way he attained it, he wrote a bold, fairly-formed hand, and his 

 style is clear and vigorous. His real education, however, was 

 got out of doors, in the fields and by the lochside. His powers 

 of observation very early attracted attention. It is said that on 

 a visit to some relatives in his native parish, when still a mere 

 boy, he collected and planted a number of wild flowers in his 

 friend's garden, arranged according to a system of his own. In 

 Forfar the tradition is that he began to learn his father's trade, 

 but soon left it, his passion for flowers being so strong as to 

 prevent him making any progress. He was then sent to Dupplin 



1 Communicated to the Perthshire Society of Natural Science on January 

 6, 1881. 



