52 HISTORY OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 
life, and the story of them as given by Mr. Druce is somewhat 
conjectural and open to correction. 
A special interest attaches to Don’s life that is absent in the 
case of other Principal Gardeners on account of the number of 
plants new to the Scottish Flora that were recorded by him 
and which were for long gathered by no one else. The 
list of such “unconfirmed finds” is smaller now than it was 
a few years ago. n the case of some of them _ it 
seemed unlikely that the plants would belong to the Scottish 
Flora, and as year after year passed by without their being 
re-gathered the question of the possibility of error on Don’s 
part was naturally raised and discussed with increasing 
persistency. In the following pages Mr. Druce deals with this 
matter in fullest detail! I wish only to say here regarding it 
that as I read history it does not seem to be established that 
botanists of last century suggested—as has been hinted—moral 
turpitude on the part of Don—that he deliberately recorded 
false stations and knowingly sent out garden-plants as natives of 
the Highland hills—but only that his methods and circum- 
stances? being such as to make mistakes easy and not unlikely, 
he sometimes fell into error. If an incautious botanist occasion- 
ally expressed himself in too dogmatic terms regarding Don the 
attitude of the majority has been, I think, the judicial one so clearly 
explained by Mr. H. C. Watson?, and in Scotland there has been 
coupled with this an expectancy, as stated by Professor John 
Hutton Balfour‘, although with often a reservation in respect of 
some unlikely forms. So much was the just claim of Science, 
and the list of “Reputed” and “ Unconfirmed” Discoveries by Don 
that is placed at the end of “ Hooker’s Student’s Flora” was its 
legitimate outcome and a call to investigation. That investi- 
gation has resulted—as Mr. Druce shows, and in it he has shared 
in no small degree—in a reduction of the dimensions of the list, 
but, notwithstanding all that has been done, we have still, 
nearly one hundred years after Don’s time, a list of plants 
recorded by him “respecting which grave suspicion of error 
exists,” 
1 See pages 123, 141. 
* See Mr. Druce as to this on page 142. 
* Quoted with approval by Mr. Druce on pag 
* Botanical Excursions made by Professor John Hutton Balfour,” in 
Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, vol. ii. (1902), p. 55. 
See Mr. Druce as to this on page 125. 
