374 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



" prosector " to Dr. Redfern, then lecturer on Anatomy in 

 King's College, Aberdeen. From various causes, largely 

 connected with want of means, though befriended by the 

 professors, he was unable to complete his curriculum and 

 take his medical degree. In 1856, after he had married, 

 he went to the Arctic seas as medical officer in a whaler. 

 He did so for five years, and endured the necessary priva- 

 tions less for the money thus gained than for the fascination 

 he felt in examining the Natural History of these little- 

 known regions, especially the Botany of both land and 

 sea, flowering and cryptogamic. The results of these 

 indefatigable explorations were afterwards published in 

 the Linnaean Society* and the New Philosophical Journals, 

 and formed then the most valuable contribution to Arctic 

 science yet made, as testified by the highest authorities, 

 who edited his collections. Many specimens were new 

 to the Arctic flora, and one lichen was named Tayloria> in 

 acknowledgment of his services. 



Mr. Taylor was employed for some years at Kew 

 Gardens, then under Sir William Hooker, arranging and 

 naming the multitudinous specimens there ; and to the 

 museum, he presented his large collection of Arctic lichens, 

 mosses and flowering plants. His investigations into the 

 flora of Aberdeen and the neighbouring counties have been 

 very thorough. Dr. Beverley and he, among other works, 

 were the first to make public exhibitions of Fungi in Scot- 

 land, efforts that have ripened into the formation of the Cryp- 

 togamic Society of Scotland and its popular exhibitions. 

 But Taylor's study of science has not by any means been con- 



* Vols. x. and xi. Mr. Taylor wrote on the flowering plants himself, 

 and Dr. Dickie, of Aberdeen, on the al%ce. 



