322 HISTORY OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN. 
He was an active botanist, and, after acting as assistant in the 
laboratory of Professor (afterwards Sir Robert) Christison, he 
went in 1838 to Jamaica, where he took up medical practice at St. 
Ann’s.! 
From Jamaica, Gilbert McNab sent to Britain considerable 
collections of dried plants. He died in Jamaica on 2ist 
January, 1859.2 
homas, the youngest son, was in Assam in early life, and, 
as we have seen, had returned at the close of his father’s 
life. He subsequently settled in Canada, and his descendants are 
now prominent citizens in Montreal. 
‘The following extract from the Hainburgh Evening Courant of 30th December, 
1837, ood a pleasing ceremony in Edinburgh before he left :— 
DR cNas.—This excellent young man, we find, is about to leave Scot- 
land, ay to ieiie down a medical practitioner in Jamaica. In contemplation of this cir- 
cumstance he was invited by the resident members of the Edinburgh Botanical Society 
to meet them at supper in Barry’s Hotel on Wednesday last, 27th ulto. Professor 
Graham, President of the Society, was in the chair; Professor Christison, one of the 
vice-presidents, acted as croupier, and besides a large proportion of the resident 
members, several of Dr. McNab’s friends, not members of the Society, were present, 
anxious to pay any compliments in their power to one so shia respected. The 
party was onion a very large one, and among them were Mr. Lindsay Carnegy, 
Dr. Neill, Dr. Walker Arnott, Dr. Greville, Dr. Peebles, and Soaicy other pasbigns 
whose greetings upon this occasion were as Scpsecauren: as they must have 
gratifying, to him in whose success in life the , some of them f, dist: 
in the country, to express an interest. In the course al the evening the progress of 
r. McNab, even Pa his boyhood, was traced, and unanimous testimony borne to 
the fact that in no situation as a schoolboy, as a pupil of the Calva: a candidate 
for his Degree, an assistant in the Clinical Wards of the Infirmary, 2 most efficient 
member of the Botanical Society, a am or a friend, had he ever made, in a matter of 
the smallest consequence, one false step. Dr. McNab will leave the country assured 
of the warm attachment of a large badly of friends, who entertain the most sanguine 
anticipation of his mane advancement to great professional eminence and to merited 
scientific repute. 
. 2 A short biographical notice of Dr. Gilbert McNab appears in the Trans. Bot. Soc. 
Edin. (1860). 
a om Sis ee rt a eS. CPR 3 t ri ae ime FS i. 
Royal Gardens, Kew, 
Oct. 5th/71 
. 
I have great pleasure in stating that I was well acquainted with Mr. Thomas McNab 
in his youth, when myself a resident in Edinburgh and doing duty daily in the Royal 
Botanic Gardens there as protempore lecturer for the late Professor Graham (Prof. of 
— — on Mr. Baresi father was Curator of the Gardens and himself 
ng , of excellent moral character, 
and under training of his eke for the practice of gardening, especially landscape 
14 
; ening. p : 
I have reason to believe that Mr. Thomas McNab did full justice to his father’s 
