340 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



teacher awa' in Ingland, wha baith used, mony a day, to 

 come to you wi' their bits o' floors and girses ; and many a 

 lauch I hae had at ye a', as ye stud at the door there i' the 

 gloamin', lookin' at the unco' things and gabbin' over them 

 to nae end ! " 



The first of John's disciples here referred to was John 

 M. B. Taylor, already mentioned. He was a farm-servant 

 in the Vale of Alford, and for a time at Tillychetly on the 

 Leochel, opposite Droughsburn. He first made the botanist's 

 acquaintance in 1871, when he saw his herbarium. At once 

 he felt, as he says, "a peculiar charm in the man and his 

 studies that struck a high-sounding chord in his nature." 

 In May, 1872, he took some schoolboys to the rare weaving 

 shop, when the old man delightedly showed them his 

 plants and described their peculiarities and discovery, till 

 it was time to leave. John then accompanied them home- 

 wards, according to his kindly practice, and the young folks 

 indulged on the way in the unwonted pleasure of gathering 

 the wild flowers by the roadside, and bringing them to be 

 named by John, who spoke also of their medicinal proper- 

 ties. At parting, he talked earnestly to the ploughman 

 of the joys of Botany, the charm it had been to himself 

 in his loneliness, the contentment it had imparted in his 

 lowly life, and his delight in solitary wanderings in search 

 of his favourites, all uttered in what seemed to the young 

 man a vein of " true poetry." 



Taylor was now thoroughly " bitten " with the subject, 

 and set himself to its systematic study under John's 

 guidance. He commissioned his tutor that autumn to 

 bring him a text-book from Aberdeen, which he did with 

 pleasure, "Brook's Introduction to the Linnsean System." 



