132 TRANSACTIONS OP ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



X. The late Mr Malcolm Dunn, Dalkeith. 

 By W. Matthews Gilbert, Edinburgh. 



By the death of Mr Malcolm Dunn, Palace Gardens, Dalkeith, 

 which took place suddenly and unexpectedly on the 11th May 

 1899, the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society sustained one of 

 the severest losses it has experienced for many years. For the 

 Society, in which he was a member of long standing, and had 

 been a vice-president and councillor, Mr Dunn had a warm 

 regard. He had watched over its growth with anxious solici- 

 tude ; he loved to spend himself in its service, and it is not too 

 much to say that, more than most men in its membership, 

 he helped to raise it to the high position which it now holds 

 as an educational and social body in the land. By its members 

 generally no one was better known or held in higher esteem, 

 both for his own and his work's sake. The news of his death, 

 sudden and swift as it was, came as a crushing blow to his 

 many friends, and how numerous these were was abundantly 

 testified by the large and representative gathering of arbori- 

 culturists, horticulturists, and gentlemen in every walk of life 

 who were present in Dalkeith Cemetery on 13th May, when his 

 remains were laid to rest in the grave. 



Malcolm Dunn was born on 14th December 1837, in the parish 

 of Methven, Perthshire, where his father, Alexander Dunn, was 

 a farm grieve. Owing to changes of his father's household, 

 Mr Dunn was educated both at Methven and in the old parish 

 school of Crieff. Of these early days we have no record; but 

 there is little doubt that he was a diligent and apt student, for 

 he loved knowledge and sought it earnestly from his earliest to 

 his latest years. 



His school days were over in 1850, when, at the age of thirteen, 

 he became an apprentice gardener at Strathallan Castle, under the 

 late Mr Thomson. He was there for four years. During the 

 next fifteen years he made several changes, always for the better, 

 seeking fresh experience, and pushing to the front in a way which 

 showed how sterling were the qualities he possessed as a man and 

 a horticulturist. In 1856 he was at Spotsboro Hall, Yorkshire; 

 about 1858 or 1860 he was at Trentham Gardens as foreman ; 

 subsequently he went to Eardiston Gardens, Tenbury, Worcester- 

 shire, to be head gardener. This establishment having been 

 broken up, he next tilled a responsible position in Veitch's Chelsea 



