Obituary Notice. 479 



OBITUARY NOTICE OF DECEASED FELLOW. 



Thomas Boyle Grieeson. By J. Shaw, Tynron. 



(Read 13tli February 1890.) 



Dr Grierson of Thornhill, a zealous local antiquarian and 

 naturalist, passed away from among us on 26th September 

 1889. He was the only son of the late William Grierson, 

 draper, Dumfries, in which town he was born 19th February 

 1818. He had thus completed his seventy -first year. His 

 father, in conjunction with a friend, issued the circular, 

 seventeen years after the poet Burns' death, calling attention 

 to the desirability of building a mausoleum over his ashes. 

 He was secretary to the local Burns Club, and his son used 

 to relate how the great Wedgewood punch-bowl of the club 

 was taken to the house on the night of its arrival, and the 

 month old naturalist " handselled " it by his father setting him 

 inside it. His father acquired a small residential property, 

 Grovehill, near Thornhill ; and Dr Grierson, after finishing 

 his medical education in Edinburgh, practised for a short 

 time in Moniaive, and afterwards in Thornhill, where he 

 remained during the rest of his life. Dr Grierson's tastes 

 were versatile, and all through life he was an eager and 

 omnivorous collector. The late Duke of Buccleuch, through 

 his late chamberlain, Mr John Gilchrist Clark, having been 

 made aware of his extensive collection crowded into a nar- 

 row room, granted a site on favourable terms, and assisted 

 him to build a museum to contain them, which is now an 

 ornament to the village of Thornhill and an attraction to all 

 seekers after knowledge in the locality. It is perhaps as 

 varied and valuable a collection as ever was gathered to- 

 gether by a private individual in Scotland. It is particu- 

 larly rich in local antiquities. 



As a botanist, Dr Grierson preferred living plants to 

 pressed specimens. His extensive garden contained many 

 shrubs and plants, but there was no attempt at system in 

 the arrangement ; and the whole park had the appearance of 

 a wilderness, interspersed with stone crosses, old baptismal 



