Dec. 1898.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 225 



as dressers in Professor Syme's ward, and he knew him 

 well. Dr. Aitchison's eldest sister was married to Eev. 

 Dr. Gordon, of Newbattle, Dalkeith ; and there young 

 Aitchison spent his Saturday afternoons, and made the 

 acquaintance of Miss Eleanor Carmichael Craig, the second 

 daughter of Eobevt Craig, Esq., of Craigesk, whom he 

 married in 1862. Mrs. Aitchison' was a lady of charming 

 manners, and entered sympathetically and enthusiastically 

 into the special studies which engaged the attention of her 

 husband. She was his constant companion in most of his 

 travels, and it seems not improbable that her devotion may 

 have injured her health. 



In 1858, Dr. Aitchison entered the service of the 

 Honourable East India Company, by competition, as 

 assistant-surgeon, and he remained in the Indian Medical 

 Service till 1888, when he retired with the rank of surgeon- 

 major. Soon after his arrival in India, he began to take 

 the same interest in Indian plants that he had already 

 exhibited in the plants around Edinburgh. His great 

 interest in tracing the origin of Indian drugs seems to 

 have more and more led him to give his chief attention to 

 botanical pursuits. Nevertheless he was frequently com- 

 mended for unfailing diligence in medical and other official 

 services. His duties took him into the districts of North- 

 west India, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Persia, and Turkestan; 

 and the rich fields, and, to a large extent, virgin soil 

 which these districts afforded for his favourite studies, 

 begat in him a fascination which continued to the very 

 last. As early as 1862, he sent a collection of between 

 four and five hundred species to Kew, where there is a 

 complete and extensive series of all the plants he 

 collected. 



His first paper, prepared while on sick-leave in England 

 in 1862, was on "Flora of the Jhelum District of the 

 Punjab" (Liun. Soc. Trans. Bot., vol. viii., 1863). This 

 was followed by a paper " On the Vegetation of the 

 Jhelum District of the Punjab " (Journ. of the Asiatic 

 Society of Calcutta, vol. xxxiii., 1864); " Eemarks on the 

 A^egetation of the Islands of the Indus Eiver " (Journ. of 

 the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, vol. xxxiv., 1865); and 

 '• Lahul : its Flora and Vegetable Products, etc., from Com- 



