OBITUARY. 141 
practitioners of the healing art we are indebted for almost all our know- 
ledge of the plants of Scotland and of the Borders. We need only men- 
tion Dr. Skene, the correspondent of Linnzeus ; Dr. Lightfoot ; Dr. Mur- 
ray, the author of the ‘ Northern Flora,’ whose premature death was a 
great loss to science in general, and to botany in particular; Dr. Dickie, 
the learned professor of Belfast College; and the subject of this notice, 
Dr. Johnston, of Berwick-on-Tweed. As a physician and naturalist gene- 
rally, we did not know Dr. Johnston; but those who did, bear ample tes- 
timony to his worth, both as a medical man and asa promoter of science 
in general; and we know, from the geniality of his disposition, that he 
was a very estimable man in domestic, social, professional life. We no- 
tice him as a botanist. His first distinct work on Botany is the ‘ Flora of 
Berwick-on-Tweed,’ in two volumes, published in 1829 and 1830,—a work 
which is enlivened by appropriate scraps of poetry, illustrative either of 
the plants specified, or of the localities where they were collected. This 
has the advantage of rendering a scientific work attractive to some who 
would not notice it if it was rigidly restricted to a statement of scientific 
facts. This plan has its admirers; and we have heard the ‘ Flora of Ber- 
wick-on-Tweed’ highly commended for this distinguishing feature. We 
do not eulogize this distinctive characteristic, and we will not blame it. 
The work itself has been before the botanical public twenty years and 
more, and it has consequently got its due meed of praise already. Our 
opinion is that a very interesting work on the poetry of flowers and their 
associations might be prepared, in which plants should not occupy the 
prominent place, but serve merely to point the force of the poetic senti- 
ment or embellish the description. A catalogue of plants is not the most 
appropriate place for a selection from the legendary lore and lyrical effu- 
sions of the past and present ages. We hope to live to see local lists of 
plants, so compiled as to be obtainable on as easy terms as the Catalogue 
of British Plants, published under the sanction of the Botanical Society of 
London. We may, in these days of cheap travelling by excursion trains and 
steam-boats, visit Berwick-on-Tweed, and we should like to be able to buy 
a list of its plants at a smaller cost than the expense of travelling to and 
from the Borders. But this is a bookmaking age. The last work, and 
the most interesting to botanists, published by this amiable man, is ‘ The 
Natural History of the Eastern Borders.’ Of this the botanical portion 
alone has appeared; but it is fraught with racy descriptions of nature and 
nature’s productions; it is the work of a man whose sympathies were 
with humanity, and whose heart and soul overflowed with the enjoyment 
derivable from natural scenery and natural objects. This work affords 
ample evidence of the pleasures afforded by plants to the man of taste, 
feeling, and science; a proof that the wild, neglected things of our glens, 
mountains, and fells are capable of educing those associations and aspi- 
rations which contribute a large quota towards the amount of human 
happiness. But we are not reviewing this work, but paying a respectful 
tribute to the memory of its author. Dr. Johnston was the promoter, and 
we believe we may say the mainstay, of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ 
Club, and many of its valuable communications are from his pen. These 
field clubs, which are not uicommon in the north and west of England, 
we should like to see established in the southern counties of the Island, 
