PRINCIPAL GARDENERS—JOHN MACKAY. 31 
His private social virtues will not indeed ever be forgotten by 
his relatives and acquaintance: but as the influence of these 
virtues was local, their remembrance must be temporary ; it must 
perish in a great measure with those who witnessed them. But 
his fame as a botanist was already widely diffused, and will long 
be held in remembrance. His name will live in the annals of 
the Linnean Society: it is frequently recorded with honour by 
Dr. SMITH in the elegant botanical work already mentioned ! ; 
and we may perhaps hope that that truly eminent Botanist will 
yet further embalm it, by connecting it with some species 
of plant of which he was the discoverer. 
It would be improper not to take notice here, of some very 
neat verses to Mr. Mackay’s memory, which were circulated 
among his acquaintance, and appeared in the “ Edinburgh 
Evening Courant”? soon after his decease. They were the 
effusion of a worthy and most affectionate friend; and, to no 
small poetical merit, added the recommendation of pourtraying 
their subject. 
LETTERS OF JOHN MACKAY. 
To this sympathetic contemporaneous sketch, hitherto lost 
sight of, I add transcripts of some of Mackay’s letters which 
have come under my notice, for the light they throw on his 
relationships with botanists of his day. 
The following from Mackay to Robert Brown is preserved in 
the Brown Correspondence in the British Museum, Cromwell 
' Opposite to plate 1123 of this work (Poa flexuosa) Dr. Smith has given 
the following elegantly simple eulogy of his deceased botanical friend :— 
“The Scottish mountain of Ben Nevis, amongst a profusion of botanical 
rarities, has afforded us this new species of Poa, discovered there by the 
late Mr. John Mackay, a young man, who sacrificed his repose, and finally 
his health and life, to the too ardent pursuit of botany and horticulture. His 
SORT powers, and readiness of communication, will long live in the 
mory of those who knew him. We would never neglect the opportunity 
ts twining a modest garland for the brows of such benefactors to science, 
even though it were only of grass or moss,” —Eug/ish Botany, No. 135; for 
February 1803. 
* For June 3, 1802.—/. B. B. 
