198 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



Though the Hopkirks resided much at Dalbeth, 

 they kept a town-house as well. In 1777 they re- 

 moved to a new mansion at the east corner of 

 Dun lop Street and Argyle Street, which was sold in 

 1790, and converted into the much-frequented hotel, 

 "whereof the stone Buck's-Head surmounting the 

 present buildings is a memento. Dunlop Street was 

 then being laid out as a fashionable quarter. Sir 

 John Moore's father, the accomplished and impe- 

 cunious doctor who wrote Zeluco and many other 

 works, lived a door or two from the Hopkirks ; and 

 among other neighbours were two reverend doctors, 

 whose righteous souls were grieved to the quick of 

 legal redress-seeking when the foundations of a play- 

 house were laid in the street. It was only after a 

 new mansion had been built at Dalbeth by James 

 Hopkirk, the father of the botanist, that it became 

 the permanent abode of his family. 



James Hopkirk was also a man of worth and 

 standing. He married Miss Christian Glassford of 

 Dougalston, of the family long so intimately con- 

 nected with Glasgow affairs which has left a per- 

 petual memento in the name of Glassford Street. 

 He lived to an advanced age, and w^rote amongst 

 other things an Account of the Foi^th and Clyde 

 Canal Navigation. But it is with Thomas Hopkirk, 

 the enthusiastic and assiduous observer of nature, 

 we have to do, and so I must limit myself to these 

 mere fringes of fact about "forebears." Both by 

 father and mother he has the locus standi of a 

 Glasgow connection going back beyond a grand- 

 father at least. 



He was educated in Glasgow, and in 1800 matri- 

 culated at the University.* The nearness of Dalbeth 

 to the city brought him within the influence of the 

 learning and culture of the time ; while its situation, 



* One of the entries in the University Album for 1800 is as 

 follows: "Thomas Hopkirk, filius natu maximus Jacobi 

 nrmigeri de Dalbeth, in Parochia de Barony in Comitatu de 

 Lanark." 



