PRINCIPAL GARDENERS—ROBT. MENZIES, JOHN MACKAY. 21 
Robert Menzies. 
On M‘Coig’s death Robert Menzies was appointed his 
successor. Of him we can tell little. He was probably a native 
of Weem in Perthshire, and was elder brother of Archibald 
Menzies, a distinguished botanist and traveller, who, as a young 
man, was also employed in the Botanic Garden, and apparently 
under his brother.!_ The Pipe Roll for the later years of the 
eighteenth century is missing from the series, and therefore 
I am not able to determine the exact date of the death of 
Menzies, but from a statement by Dr. Neill? we know that his 
successor in the Garden was appointed in February 1800. 
John Mackay. 
The successor of Robert Menzies was John Mackay, brother 
of James Townsend Mackay, the distinguished botanist 
whose name will always be associated with the investigation of 
the flora of Ireland. John Mackay’s name is familiar to 
British botanists, for it occurs frequently in the pages of British 
floras, but we depend for our knowledge of the incidents of 
his career upon the following memoir, from the pen of Dr. 
Neill, which appeared in the “Scots Magazine” for 1804 :— 
SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE Mr. JOHN 
MACKAY, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC 
GARDEN AT EDINBURGH. 
Almost two years have elapsed since the death of this exeel- 
lent young botanist ; and hitherto no account (as far as I have 
observed) has been given to the public, of his professional 
_. excellence, the progress he had made in botany, and the 
services he rendered to that science, or of the many amiable 
qualities of his personal character. 
The writer of the following short memoir is conscious of his 
inability to do justice to the subject. But however imperfect his 
* The biographical notices of Archibald Menzies in Proc. Linn. Soc., vol. 
i. PP ees p- 139, and in the D. N. B., give in error “ William” as the name 
ther who was Principal Gardener of the Royal Botanic Garden. 
See below in the memoir of John Mackay. 
