/O JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



the scythe was little used, and reaping machines had not 

 been dreamt of in the north. The strange .harvester that 

 had taken shape in the quiet Forfarshire manse of 

 Carmylie, and was first produced in what is now reckoned 

 a rude embryonic form, by its clerical inventor, the Rev. 

 Patrick Bell, in 1826, two years after John Duncan left 

 Aberdeen, was long viewed with suspicion by conservative 

 agriculturists, and did not become general for many years 

 afterwards. 



Of this health-giving field of labour John now took 

 yearly advantage, gaining strength, money and knowledge, 

 gathering medicinal plants, seeing new regions, making 

 new friends, and gradually dispelling the malign effects 

 of the sorrows through which he had recently passed. 



Besides taking harvest yearly, and wandering in search 

 of herbs, John varied his sedentary life by going at 

 intervals to Aberdeen, to buy yarn for his work and books 

 to satisfy his increasing intellectual thirst. 



For many years, also, he went annually to Aberdeen to 

 be trained as a soldier. About 1824, the time he broke up 

 his house, he seems to have joined the militia, to relieve 

 his mind from heavier thoughts, and swell his small purse. 

 That being a time of wars and rumours of wars, even after 

 the once omnipotent war-scourge had been caged in the 

 rocky Atlantic isle to die there in 1821, this home force 

 was then regularly drilled, in full complement, for a con- 

 siderable period after peace was restored. During the 

 French wars and long after, the ballot was in force, as it 

 still can be in any emergency. Every able-bodied male 

 was eligible to be drawn between the ages of eighteen 

 and thirty-five ; with certain exceptions, such as peers, 



