62 THE LIFE AND WORK OF GEORGE DON, 
kirk. There he met his friend the minister, and asked him, 
“What day ist—Fast or Sabbath?” He got his answer, and 
replied, “ Man, I have lost count, but if I had my hands and face 
washed I would gang to the kirk too.” He was shown to a 
bedroom for this purpose, but when Mr. Muir, the minister, went 
to call him he found him fast asleep. 
Dr. Patrick Neill of Canonmills Lodge, Edinburgh, who in 
after life proved a kind friend to Don, and a generous and 
timely helper to his widow and children when they sorely 
needed it, gives the following account! of how he made Don’s 
acquaintance :— 
“When on a pedestrian excursion along the east coast of 
Scotland I happened to spend a night at Montrose, and _ it 
occurred to me that both Brechin and Forfar deserved to be 
visited—tthe former for its well-known Den Noran and its round 
tower of remote antiquity; and the latter for its remarkable 
botanic garden, and its owner, whose fame was familiar to me, 
owing to my intimacy with his regular correspondent, Mr. John 
Mackay of the Leith Walk Nurseries.2 In passing along the 
margin of the sea basin above Montrose, the tide being at ebb, 
1 Biographical notice of the late Mr. George Don of Forfar. By Pat. 
Neill, LL.D. “Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh,” Vol. 
IV. (1850-53), p- 117. Published also in the ‘‘ North British Agriculturist”’ 
for the year 1851, and in Henfrey’s “Botanical Gazette,” Vol. III. (1851). 
It is remarkable that Dr. Neill, possessing as he did an intimate first hand 
knowledge of George Don and his life-work and endowed with a prolific pen, 
should not before the date of this notice, thirty-seven years after Don’s 
death, have written a memoir of him as he had done in the case of John 
Mackay. Its belated appearance gives to the notice more the character of a 
recollection than of a record. Previous to Dr. Neill’s notice Gardiner had 
given in 1848 a short account of George Don in his “Flora of Forfarshire,” 
and this was apparently the first published account of Don. It appeared in 
the end of 1847, although the date on the title page is 1848—so Mr. A. P. 
Stevenson informs me.—/, B. B. 
* Mackay held a responsible post in these nurseries from 1792-1800. 
According to Dr. Neill in his memoir of Mackay, Don and Mackay became 
personally acquainted in 1793 at Glasgow ; Don, however, puts the date as 
1791 (see Appendix G, Letter to Mr. Winch, January 1804). If Don’s 
garden referred to by Dr. Neill is Dovehillock then this visit of Neill to Don 
cannot have been earlier than 1797. This date is also pointed to by the 
number of Don’s family mentioned by Dr. Neill, the eldest of whom was 
born in 1794, according to Surgeon-General Don,—/. B. B. 
