Memoir. 
George Don was born on the Farm of Ireland in the parish of 
Menmuir,! in Forfarshire, and was christened on October 11th, 
1764, his parents being Alexander Don (1717-1813) and Isobel 
Fairweather ; both parents were descended from respectable 
farmers in the parish, and his father, as was not uncommon at 
that period, also carried on the trade ofa currier, which he followed 
on his removal to Forfar, about the year 1772. The name Don 
as a patronymic means the brown-haired or brown-complexioned 
individual, being therefore synonymic with that of Brown. 
George Don received at Forfar the ordinary elementary 
education at the parish school. He had a natural turn for 
mechanics, and acquired a taste for reading and observation, but 
his real education was obtained in the open air, wandering in the 
fields or by the loch side, and from his boyish days he took 
delight in noticing the minute characters of such birds, insects, 
* The foundation of this memoir is the story of Don’s life given by Mr. 
J. Knox in the Scottish Naturalist, 1883-84. I learn through Mr. Druce 
that Mr. Knox is not assured of the accuracy of many of the details he 
gives of Don’s early life. Mr. A. P. Stevenson of Dundee tells me that 
there is still some doubt as to Don’s birthplace. The certificate upon which 
Mr. Knox relied may not really refer to the botanist, George Don, and it is 
Suggested the date of his birth must be earlier than 1764. Certainly the 
Story as given of his early life supports such a suspicion, for it says 
that he was a gardener at Dupplin in 1779 when he would be fifteen years 
old, yet previously to this he had gone through an apprenticeship to a clock- 
Maker in Dunblane and subsequently as a journeyman had worked in 
Glasgow. Mr. Stevenson points out also that Don speaks in “‘ Headrick’s 
Forfarshire” (see Appendix F to this Memoir, p. 235) of seeing a peregrine 
falcon “in the possession of the Laird of Balnamoon’s grandfather, and of 
his servants hunting with it about the year 5771.” Don would, if born in 
1764, be then seven years old and might well remember. Balnamoon toois, 
he says, an estate in the parish of Menmuir, and this would support Mr. 
Knox’s statement as to the birthplace.—/. B. 2. 
