PRINCIPAL GARDENERS—GEORGE DON. 51 
upon his Presidential Address to the British Pharmaceutical 
Conference, in which he had given a biographical sketch of Don, 
he had worked out in critical detail the story of Don’s botanical 
work, and of the discoveries of British plants with which Don’s 
name has been associated, Mr. Druce was so good as willingly 
to assent to his memoir of Don and analytical account of Don’s 
work appearing in “Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, 
Edinburgh,” as part of our History, as it does in the following 
pages. Here and there his story has been modified, with his 
consent, in the light of facts not in his possession at the moment 
of writing, and other information has been introduced in footnotes. 
It will be seen that 1 am much indebted to Mr. Alexander P. 
Stevenson of Dundee for new matter included in footnotes, and 
I have to thank him for the postscript regarding the progress 
of the movement for the erection of a monument in Forfar to the 
memory of Don ; he also first directed my attention to the paper 
on “Indigenous Grasses” by Don in the Transactions of the 
Highland Society of Scotland. This paper, and also Don’s 
account of “Native Plants of Forfarshire,” are reprinted as 
appendices to Mr. Druce’s Memoir. In both of them there is 
mention of dates of incidents in Don’s life, and the first is pre- 
faced by a brief autobiographical statement. Another Appendix 
contains, by permission, such of George Don’s letters as have 
come under notice, my object being to present all the evidence 
available for independent judgment upon the questions that have 
been raised in regard to Don and his work and his relations with 
contemporary botanists. It is much to be regretted that Dr. 
Neill, who knew Don so well, did not write a biographical 
notice of him early in the century, at the time of Don’s death, 
when the incidents of Don’s life would be fresh in his mind; 
and it is no less regrettable that Dr. Neill’s papers, which were 
in existence in Edinburgh up to a few years ago, have disap- 
peared and cannot now be traced, for amongst them, doubtless, 
there will be correspondence with Don. Should these papers 
be found and given to the public they may be expected to 
throw much light not only on Don’s history but also upon 
all the leading botanical events that happened in Scotland 
during the first half of the nineteenth century. As it is, we 
have but little material relating to the early years of Don’s 
