A MEMOIR. 13 



gfreat disciplinarian, and such of his apprentices who 

 were able to stand his four years' rule had but little 

 trouble afterwards in securing positions. 



There seems to have been a gap between his Edin- 

 burgh experience and his procuring a more congenial 

 position. In that interval he had no predilection 

 for the profession of which in after years he was to 

 be such a great exponent. In fact his expressed desire 

 at that time was to enter a banking office. When his 

 old and life long friend Mr. Hugh Wilson, now of Salem, 

 Mass., who was then employed in the gardens of Melville 

 Castle, suggested to him that he should become a 

 gardener, he refused to entertain the idea at first, and 

 only took it up finally because nothing better offered. 

 As soon, however, as he entered on his work at Melville 

 Castle, he became enthusiastically interested, especially 

 in botanical nomenclature. He had only been a few 

 months in his new position when Mr. Ballantyne, a 

 nurseryman in Dalkeith, asked Mr. Sterling to name his 

 collection of hardy herbaceous plants that had become 

 badly mixed. Sterling replied that he would send " ane 

 o' his callants doon " *to name them and selected Peter 

 for the task. The naming was done so quickly and so 

 correctly that Mr. Ballantyne rewarded the youth with a 

 sovereign, and complimented him on the good use he had 

 made of the short time he had been at the business. In 

 his talk with him, Peter told how during the summer 

 he had employed his spare time in making a herbarium 

 to familiarize himself with botanical names. Mr. Ballan- 

 tyne told him to bring it to him when finished, and it 

 pleased him so much that he presented him with a silver 

 medal, which he had intended to offer as a herbarium 

 prize to a local society. The following season 

 Peter Henderson competed for and won the medal 

 offered by the Royal Botanical Society of Edinburgh 

 for the best herbarium of native and exotic plants ; 

 a competition open to the whole of Great Britain. This 

 gave him a practical knowledge of botany which 



* " One of his young men down. " 



