128 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



both of them having seceded with the Free Church. 

 Charles Black, who was then and still is, as he says, " Tory 

 to the backbone " politics being the only thing in which he 

 is conservative stood alone in subscribing for the Aberdeen 

 Constitutional. This paper John abhorred but read for its 

 news, and, curiously enough, many of his plants in the 

 herbarium now in Aberdeen University are preserved in 

 the sheets of this hated organ, the paper having proved 

 truly conservative in botanical as well as in political matters. 



Charles Hunter's estimate of John Duncan is remarkably 

 high. He praises his omnivorous reading, his extraordinary 

 memory, his unconquerable perseverance against opposition, 

 misunderstanding and difficulty. " When he didna under- 

 stand onything," he says, " he just read it ower and ower 

 till he had it, and then it stuck ! " He believes that " he 

 would have been a great man if he had had a good 

 education." 



The shoemaker's shop here, as in most places, was 

 the rendezvous of the district, where the more intelligent 

 used to drop in, to hear the papers read and hold discussions 

 on the topics of the day. Ecclesiastical polemics were 

 then volcanic, before '43 ; and how keen these discussions 

 were, is impossible to be sufficiently realised by those 

 who did not pass through that heated time. 



One of the keenest debaters on these burning questions 

 was Sandy Cameron, the tailor, who lived next door to 

 Marnock's, a worthy, hard-working, careful, and intelligent 

 man, respected by all that knew him. Though he cared 

 nothing for plants, he studied astronomy in books, which 

 became a natural bond of union with " Johnnie Moon." 

 He was one of that species of tailor known in Scotland 



