1 8 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



ebbing away, he spoke with undimmed ardour of these 

 early days and the life-moulding impressions they had 

 produced. The very motto of the Keiths, inscribed on the 

 torn and faded banner borne at fatal Flodden, and now 

 preserved in the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, was a 

 guiding maxim and high impulse for life: VERITAS 

 VlNClT. And round few places in the country has 

 Scottish history more revolved than Dunnottar, as even a 

 slight glance at its eventful story will prove ; and for a lad 

 or man there is nothing more educationally valuable then 

 to have a visible and inspiring centre round which to group 

 his historical knowledge, especially if it is illumined by the 

 poetry of the past and the glamour of youthful enthusiasm. 

 Here also, on these sweet-scented braes with their rich 

 and varied flora, clothing their crests, clinging to their 

 crevices and hidden in their darksome caves, was intensified 

 another of the strongest impulses of his life his love of 

 wild plants. In conversing afterwards on the subject, he 

 could not tell when he began to be interested in flowers. 

 As he said, " I aye liket the bonnie things ; " but he always 

 looked back to the cliffs of his early days as generating 

 his deeper affection for them, and surrounding them 

 throughout life with a bright poetical halo. As he 

 correctly put the matter himself, " I just took a notion to 

 ken ae plant by anither when I was rinnin' aboot the braes. 

 I never saw a plant but I lookit for the marrows o'd 

 (that is, for those similar) ; and, as I had a gweed memory, 

 when I kent a flower ance, I kent it aye." In this early 

 activity of the faculty of comparison, the essence of all true 

 thinking, involving, as it does, that of discrimination, lay 

 the foundation of his future scientific success. Of his 



