156 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. lxxvii. 



sick-bed by friendly hands, and from the window of his 

 room saw the strange birds for the first and last time. The 

 ruling passion in this lover of nature was strong to the end. 

 The next issue of the " Courier " intimated the death of 

 the invalid sightseer — William Gardiner — of whom it is 

 proposed to give a sketch. 



This Overgate of Dundee we all know, more or less. 

 It is not the likeliest spot for the birth and upbringing 

 of a naturalist and poet, and yet the whole life-history of 

 William Gardiner was practically developed in or near 

 this unpromising thoroughfare. 



He was born in a building which still stands at the north- 

 west corner of South Tay Street. At the opposite corner 

 of North Tay Street is the house in which for many years 

 he lived and wrote the greater part of those manuscript 

 magazines — now in the Lamb " Old Dundee " collection — 

 which were the outcome of his fertile brain and evidence 

 of the skill of his deft and willing lingers. He served the 

 years of his apprenticeship to an umbrella-maker, in a shop 

 at the Overgate end of Barrack Street, and worked as a 

 journeyman in another shop between Thorter Row and 

 Tally Street. A little to the west of South Lindsay Street, 

 just opposite St. Paul's U.F. Mission Buildings, is the small 

 shop where he offered for sale pamphlets and periodicals, 

 and disposed of, as well as prepared, his specimens and 

 portfolios of British plants. A few yards to the west of 

 this is Spence's Close, where his happy married life was 

 spent, where his dearly loved wife died, and where in 

 shadow and gloom the days of his own pilgrimage were 

 ended. It neither is, nor was, an ideal setting for a 

 naturalist's life, and yet in Gardiner's earlier days it did 

 not lack redeeming features. If the houses were small 

 and dingy, and the street narrow and dirty, still, on the 

 other side of the buildings, away from the street, there 

 were bits of garden in which flowers bloomed, and fruit 

 trees grew and flourished. Gardiner writes at times of 

 what he saw from his windows — insects fluttering in the 

 flower beds ; valerian growing luxuriantly, and cats, as is 

 their wont, getting quite wild over it — he wants to know 

 the reason why ? Many other observations are recorded 

 which show that even in these unlikely quarters he was 



