20 HISTORY OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 
Samuel, who was educated by Professor Hope and became a 
doctor in the Indian service; the other, James, was blind. He 
also had a daughter, Nancy, who married the well-known Dr. 
Andrew Fyfe, Lecturer on Anatomy. ! 
The successor to Williamson apparently was not appointed at 
once for I find in the Pipe Roll? a record of payment of two guineas 
“to Mr. Knox for superintending the Garden after Mr. William- 
son’s death,” and in the same Pipe Roll “ John Bell, gardener,” is 
credited with disbursements for the Garden, these being “ wages 
and petty expenses,” the amount of which, £109 17s. 8d., shows 
that he was acting as paymaster for some little time. John 
Bell does not seem to have been appointed Principal Gardener, 
and was perhaps the senior working gardener in the Garden 
acting at first under the direction of Mr. Knox, and subsequently 
taking independent charge. Whether a Mr. Richmond, who, 
according to the same Pipe Roll, received a sum of £2 3s. at 
this time—for what service is not stated—was also a temporary 
superintendent, perhaps following Mr. Knox, there is at present 
no means of deciding, but the position of his name in the Pipe 
Roll, and the amount and statement of the payment he received, 
make the conjecture that he so acted a legitimate one. 
Malcolm M‘Coig. 
By the 1st January 1782 a new Principal Gardener had been 
appointed in the person of Malcolm M‘Coig, and he continued in 
this position until his death on the 25th February 1789. He 
therefore survived Professor Hope, who died in 1787, and he 
was Principal Gardener when Professor Rutherford became 
Regius Keeper. Regarding M‘Coig we have no further informa- 
tion as yet, but that he was a man of some vigour, and of 
better education than John Williamson, is shown by papers 
among our Hope MSS. assigned to his authorship by Professor 
Hope, in which he makes proposals for various changes in the 
laying-out of the Garden. 
* “Last night was married Mr. Andrew Fyfe of this place to Nancy 
Williamson.”—Caledonian Mercury, October 20th, 1787. 
* Pipe Roll.—“The declaration of the accounts of Doctor John Hope, 
Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh, of the money 
received and paid by him on account of the Botanic Garden there from 11th 
March 1769 to Ist January 1782,” 
