W. Gome. 299 



After his novitiate as apprentice gardener, Mr Gorrie 

 accepted service with the late Charles Lawson of Edin- 

 burgh in 1834, and was Curator of the great collection of 

 vegetable products which afterwards became the celebrated 

 Museum of the Highland and Agricultural Society, now 

 incorporated with the Museum of Science and Art. In 

 the preface to the first edition of Lawson's Agrindturist's 

 3Ianual, published in 1836, the valuable aid of Mr Gorrie 

 is duly acknowledged ; while a similar tribute is given in 

 the treatise on the British Cultivated Grasses, issued by the 

 same firm. He described the Grasses in Morton's Cyclo- 

 pedia of Agriculture. Mr Gorrie's subsequent history 

 comprises few details : he was factor at Prestonhall, Mid- 

 lothian, from 1843 till 1859 ; then returning to the charge 

 of the Lawson nurseries for a few years, he afterwards 

 became a landscape gardener and adviser on estate man- 

 agement. The dignity of tree study has to be insisted on 

 in days when the microscope has so absorbing claims on 

 botanists. Our town gardens and public parks alike, even 

 yet remain too much swathed in arboreal cerements, em- 

 blematic of the stiff gardening formalism of a by-gone age. 

 Why not adapt the varied forms and foliage of trees, as our 

 lamented friend put it, to the high aims of his art of making 

 straight lines rugged, and rugged lines straight, — all com- 

 bining to give that abandonment of mind so delicious to 

 weary workers near the crowded city's ceaseless roar. And 

 graceful foreign trees, such as the New Zealand novelties so 

 well known to visitors at Kait Lodge, might be thus advan- 

 tageously introduced, though not in the fashion of the rows 

 of Araucaria imbricata, in various shades of brown, adorn- 

 ing our suburban villas. Mr Gorrie's matured views will be 

 found in a remarkable paper, " On the Advantages of Plant- 

 ing in Groups, or in Mixed Plantations, so as to combine 

 profit with landscape effect," Trans. Scot. Arb. Society, vol. 

 vii., 1874-75. The practical demonstration of these views 

 may be found in the grounds surrounding the Hydropathic 

 establishments at Melrose and Pitlochry, besides those of 

 many private mansions, and especially at his own residence 

 of Rait Lodge, Trinity. If, as Ruskin has it, the artist 

 appeals to a wider public than the author can possibly do, 

 so, too, may our scientific forester have taught botany. 



