274 PATRICK BLAIR, SURGEON APOTHECARY. [Szss. uxx1. 
the advancement” of the science they both loved so well. 
Dr. Blair’s intuitions and hopes were well founded. John 
Martyn lived to be the first Professor of Botany at Cam- 
bridge, and spent a long and active life in the interests of his 
science. He never forgot his helpful, admiring Scots friend, 
and always insisted that Dr. Blair “ was his preceptor in 
Botany, and the most intimate friend of his early years.” It 
is worth remembering that this Dundee doctor thus helped to 
inspire the good work which Cambridge has done for Botany, 
and which is associated with the names of the Martyns 
(father and son holding the chair between them for ninety- 
two years), Henslow and Babington.? 
The “ Pharmaco-Botanologia, an Alphabetical avi Classical 
Dissertation on all the British Indigenous and Garden Plants 
of the New London Dispensatory,” Blair’s last work, was 
published in decads, and passed through the press from 1723 
to 1728. In his preface he tells the story of its origin. 
“Being obliged to give Botanical Lectures (at Dundee) to 
some Students in Physic and Pharmacy, then under my Care, 
I first planted the Dispensatory Plants alphabetically in my 
Garden, and then dictated a History of them in Latin.” The 
efforts to publish the work I have already referred to, and 
this, as I have said, is practically an Englished version of it. 
Referring to his lectures to the Royal Society on the sexes of 
plants, etc., he says that “now being retired to a Country 
Place, I have proposed to employ my leisure Hours in dis- 
coursing on the Practical, as formerly I did on the Theoretical 
part of the Indigenous and Home-bred Vegetables.” “ Yet”— 
careful Scotsman as he was—“ not to withdraw myself from 
the Exercise of my Profession in too close a Pursnit of a 
prolix Subject.” he “propos’d to parcel out a few Plants at a 
time,” to give his reader “Time to Ruminate upon one Part 
while I am preparing another for his Entertainment.” His 
reader, he goes on, “ will soon see no ostentatious Affectation, 
no vainglorious Itching to be au Author, has prompted me to 
publish a Work upon a Subject of this Nature; I plead not the 
Desire and Solicitations of Friends; what I have most in my 
View, is, to manifest the Glory of God and his Omnipotence 
1 The record of the Chair of Botany at Cambridge is surely unique :— 
John Martyn, 1733-1761! J.S.Henslow, 1825-1861 
Thomas Martyn, 1761-1825 | C. C. Babington, 1861-1895 
