310 HISTORY OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 
The Memorialist has no means of knowing the salary and other 
oe which other Botanic Gardeners may have in various 
parts of the Kingdom. He knows however that the Curator of 
the Botanic Gardens at Liverpool has 175 guiness per annum as 
salary 00 house firing and other advantage 
e Curator of the Botanic perpen at “Giasgow has £90 per 
annum with a promise of an adva a house and a piece of 
ground for growing vegetables for his faniily and ve shillings from 
each student who may attend the Botanica ss. 
The Memorialist understands that the Saratere both of the 
College Botanic Garden and of the clences Botanic Garden at 
Dublin have upwards of £150 per annum. 
n these grounds the Memorialist earnestly entreats that the 
Right Honourable the Lord Chief Baron and Barons of Exchequer 
will take his case into consideration. He relinquished a situation 
ore € fe) an 
many years less. He therefore trusts that he will receive such an 
increase of permanent opome as shall be thought reasonable in 
the circumstances of the case. 
Wiitam McNas, Royal Botanic Garden, ee 
13th January, 1820 
The Memorial is endorsed by Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. William 
Aiton of Kew, and supported by Mr. Kennedy of Dunure ; and 
Prof. Graham, who had succeeded Prof. Rutherford (who died 
Dec. 15, 1819) as Regius Keeper, wrote in support of it at a later 
date, ‘namely 14th March, 1820. It met with a favourable 
response. The salary was raised to £80 in 1820, and to 4100 
in 1822. In 1834 a further advance to £150 was given. 
Tradition required that the Principal Gardener of the Edinburgh 
Garden should have an acquaintance with the plants of the 
Scottish flora. Part of his duty was the provision of specimens 
for the Professor’s courses of instruction to University and other 
students in the Garden, and the wild vegetation of the neigh- 
bourhood would have to be laid under requisition for many of 
these in the quantities required. And then he also accompanied 
the Professor upon his botanical excursions with pupils as a 
coadjutor in guiding and instructing the students, and also as 4 
collector of plants to add to the stock in the Garden. We have 
seen that McNab’s immediate predecessors were, all of them, 
keen botanists and collectors, and he proved to be in no way 
behind them in his interest in the flora of Scotland. I have 
often heard my father speak of the enthusiasm with which 
