114 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ABERDEEN AND DISTRICT 
College, and while still undergoing his medical course he founded the 
Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, 1789, and was himself its first 
secretary. In his after life he became distinguished as Director-General 
of the Army Medical Service. His public honours in London and 
Edinburgh were bewildering. In Aberdeen McGrigor is commemorated 
by a portrait in the Medical Society’s Rooms, King Street, by Andrew 
Geddes, A.R.A., a friend of Wilkie, and the leading etcher of his time ; 
by a portrait in Marischal College by William Dyce, R.A., a fellow- 
townsman of McGrigor and a graduate of the same College and University ; 
and by the great granite obelisk in the Duthie Park, provided by relatives, 
which stood in the quadrangle of Marischal College from 1860 till the 
summer of 1906, when it was removed to the Duthie Park to make way for 
the new front portion of the Marischal College building, inaugurated by 
the King in the autumn of that year. 
Moreson, ‘THomMas.—Dr. Thomas Moreson seems to have practised 
abroad, and a volume of his on the transmutation of metals was printed 
at Frankfort in 1593, while another of his publications—very rare—on 
the Popedom was published in Edinburgh in 1594. He was a corre- 
spondent of Bacon and other notable public persons of the period. 
Morison, THoMas.—A native and graduate of Aberdeen, Dr. Thomas 
Morison was the discoverer of Strathpeffer Spa. His father, Morison 
of Elsick, in Kincardineshire, was Provost of Aberdeen, 1744-45, when 
the burgh was taken possession of by the rebellious Jacobites. His 
brother was Rev. George Morison, D.D., minister of Banchory Devenick, 
near Aberdeen, who put up the notable suspension bridge over the Dee 
near his church, still in constant use. Dr. Thomas Morison inherited 
Elsick, also the property of Disblair, near Aberdeen. In the pump room 
at Strathpeffer may still be seen the fine portrait of Dr. ‘Thomas Morison, 
provided by public subscription, 1724, by the place that he originated 
and made permanently notable. 
SKENE, GILBERT.—Dr. Gilbert Skene was the first of a long line of 
Skenes, medical practitioners in Aberdeen. He was appointed to the 
chair of Medicine in King’s College in 1556, almost immediately after 
the Reformation. In 1568 Dr. Skene published ‘ Ane breve descriptioun 
of the Pest, quairin the causis, signis, and sum speciall preservatioun and 
cure thairof ar contenit, set furth be Maister Gilbert Skene, Doctour in 
Medicine. Imprintit at Edinburgh be Robert Lekpreok.’ 
B.—MATHEMATICIANS AND ASTRONOMERS 
BY 
GEORGE PHILIP, M.A., D.Sc. 
THE north-east of Scotland shared with the rest of the country in the 
intellectual revival that accompanied the Reformation, but it may cause 
some surprise to learn that there was no department of learning in which 
