Obituary — John Watson Laidlay. 287 



He studied Hindustani under Dr. Gilchrist in London, where he 

 had the ^ood fortune to meet the late Bishop Heber. When young 

 Laidlay had only attained his 17th year he went out to India in 1825, 

 and entered the employment of his uncles, Messrs. John and Eobert 

 Watson & Co., merchants and Indigo planters, Bengal, who were 

 also proprietors of many of the best silk filatures and factories of 

 the East India Company, such as Berhampore, Rampore-Beauleah., 

 Surdah, etc. He was generally in charge of either an indigo factory 

 or a silk filature from 1826 till about 1841, when he spent some time 

 in Berhampore, i.e. Moorshedebad, where he made many friends. He 

 married, in 1844, Miss Ellen Johnstone Hope, daughter of William 

 Hope, Esq., of Duddingston, near Edinburgh, and after that resided in 

 Calcutta. His talent for languages was very great, and his love of 

 deciphering inscriptions on the stones of ancient edifices and on 

 coins, and his perseverance in chemical researches, brought him 

 into correspondence with many of the early scientific men connected 

 with Indian afiairs, who afterwards became his attached personal 

 friends. 



His most numerous literary and scientific communications were 

 published in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society. He was also 

 connected with, and for a short time one of the Secretaries of, the 

 Eoyal Asiatic Society of Bengal. In the Journal of the former 

 society his name appears in connection with numerous memoirs 

 between the years 1884 and 1849. He originated the " Bibliotheca 

 Indica," a sei'ial publication of native Indian literature, which has 

 proved a most valuable work, and is still continued.^ 



His translation of "The Pilgrimage of Fa Hian" showed great 

 perseverance. In 1839 he went to the Straits Settlements for his 

 health, whei'e he made the acquaintance of Eajah Sir James Brooke. 



His services in India extended from 1826 to 1849, when he retired 

 from active life to reside partly in London and at various other 

 places, and finally, in 1854, at Seaclifif, near North Berwick, Had- 

 dingtonshire, Scotland. 



Here his private life was one of constant study and useful work 

 in chemistry, meteorology, archaeology, and natural histoi'y pursuits. 

 But much learning did not tiirn his thoughts from a warm interest 

 in the welfare of his family, and now that he is gone, they — more 

 than all others who knew the never-failing charm of his conversation 

 and the goodness of his large and generous heart — can realize how 

 great is their loss. 



At Seacliff, among other matters, he investigated the supposed rise 

 of the East Coast of Scotland since Eoman times, and showed, by 

 means of the discovery of a prehistoric habitation near Seacliff, 

 North Berwick, Haddingtonshire, on a rock only 23 feet above high- 

 water mark, that, had the land been lowered, this habitation, with 

 all its remains, must have been entirely swept away. See note in 

 the Geol. Mag. Vol. YIL 1870, pp. 270, 271.^ 



1 For this work Mr. Laidlay succeeded in obtaining a grant in aid from the 

 Government. 



2 For a fuller account of this interesting discovery see the Trans, of the Scottish 

 ArchiEological Society, 1870-71. 



