THOMAS HOPKIRK OF DALBETH. 197 



account for it. Though only a comparatively short 

 period separates us from his days of enthusiastic 

 labour among herbs and weeds, so great have been 

 the changes in and around this ancient city that 

 these times only seem near to us when we think of 

 the turbulent centuries beyond. Since then Glasgow 

 has grown into a really great city; and when 

 we reflect on the many indispensable elements in 

 our present civilisation that were at that time un- 

 known, we can readily conceive why this yesterday 

 ranges itself so distinctly with the dead past. 



While many men of less desert have gathered around 

 them far-sounding posthumous reputations, Thomaa 

 Hopkirk's work has been nearly forgotten. I trust 

 to be able to show how much he did and how 

 assiduously he wrought as the pioneer botanist of 

 Clydesdale. 



He was born at Dalbeth, near Glasgow, in 1785. 

 The family of which he was a member had long 

 occupied an honourable position in the city. Hiy 

 grandfather was a West India merchant — one of 

 those so-called "Tobacco Lords" or "Virginia Dons," 

 who during much of last century bore themselves^ 

 bravely on the " plain-stanes." He was also one of 

 the original partners of the "Glasgow Arms Bank." 

 About the middle of the century he lived in High 

 Street, on the east side, five doors north of the 

 Cross, in a tenement long known as "Hopkirk's 

 Land." In a part of this house the celebrated David 

 Dale afterwards retailed French yarns and acted as 

 agent for the Royal Bank of Scotland, when in a 

 humble way its first Glasgow branch was opened 

 there. About 1754, this Thomas Hopkirk purchased 

 Dalbeth Estate, and there he died in 1781.* 



* It might be interesting from a Glasgow standpoint to say 

 more of this grandfather, Thomas Hopliirk, and his times, and 

 the strange anomaly by which he was fined £20 in 1752, for 

 declining to accept the office of Councillor to which he had 

 been elected, and again in 1779 was forced to raise an action in 

 the Court of Session to escape a fine of £40 imposed on him by 

 the Town Council for refusing to accept the office of Dean of 

 Guild. 



