If, 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 



OF THE LATE 



CAPTAIN DUGALD CARMICHAEL, F. L. S. 

 B?/ the Rev. Colin Sjiith, 3Iinister of Inverary. 



[It was, I think, in the spring of 1820, when at the house of 

 the late Sir Joseph Banks, that my friend, Mr. Brown, spoke 

 to me of a gentleman of considerable acquirements having 

 arrived from the Island of Tristan d' Acunha, with an exten- 

 sive collection of its vegetable productions. My love for 

 Cryptogamic Plants led me to inquire if these had constituted 

 a part of his collections and studies, to which Mr. Brown 

 replied in the affirmative, and added, that he had left no 

 branch of the natural history of the island unexplored; as 

 was fully exemplified in the account of the island which 

 afterwards appeared in the I2th volume of the Transactions 

 of the Linnaean Society. This was the first time I heard 

 of Capt. Carmichael, for it was of him that Mr. Brown 

 spoke; and I had then no opportunity of making his acquain- 

 tance, as my professional duties required me to proceed 

 to Scotland, where, however, I had soon the opportunity 

 of obtaining a personal knowledge of the subject of this 

 memoir. He had just retired from active life, having taken a 

 farm at Appin, upon the romantic coast of Argyleshire ; a spot 

 well suited to the researches of a naturalist. Already, in the 

 few months he had spent there, Capt. Carmichael had ex- 

 plored much of the country in the vicinity of his new 

 residence, and he brought with him to Glasgow an interesting 

 collection of the mosses of that district, with whose names 

 and characters he soon made himself familiar. It was 

 impossible not to be struck with the varied knowledge 

 and information possessed by Capt. Carmichael; for though 

 in botany he took the greatest delight, yet with almost every 

 subject, and especially such as bore any relation to his ex- 

 tensive travels, his mind was richly stored. Distant and 

 reserved at first, it was not till acquaintance had ripened into 

 friendship, that his conversational powers were fully brought 



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