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XXX.—Memoir of Rev. John Fleming, D.D., F.R.S.E. By ALEXANDER 
Bryson, Esq., P.R.S.S.A. 
(Read 4th March 1861.) 
If it be true that “there is a history in all men’s lives, figuring the nature of 
the times deceased,” * how much more worthy of record the lives of those who 
have left an impress upon their age, who have corrected popular errors, have 
made clear much that was obscure, and, from the force and fulness of truth in 
them, have become the great teachers of their time. The histories of such lives 
figure more than the “'times deceased,’—they teach us how to occupy our 
time; and though these earnest men are dead, their works are vee living 
epistles, ever speaking to those “who have ears to hear.” 
It was wise in this Society to encourage the production of memoirs of those 
who have contributed, by their labours, patronage, or example, to further the 
cause of science and literature. The following memoir of a deceased member 
is a humble addition. to the many already published in this Society’s Trans- 
actions. 
_ Joun FLemine was the third son of ALEXANDER FLEMING and CATHERINE ~ 
Nimmo, and was born at the farm-house of Kirkroads, near Bathgate, on the 10th 
of January 1785, and baptized on the 13th of the same month. FLEMiNG’s ances- 
tors had long been tenants of the farm of Kirkroads; and his father, during 
JoHN’s boyhood, worked a limestone quarry near at hand, for his own farm pur- 
poses, as well as for sale. It. may be said that he was thus early initiated into a 
knowledge, however limited, of economic geology. Few, if any, of his contem- 
poraries remain, from whom might have been gleaned the history of his school- 
boy days. This much at least is known,—he was not distinguished for main- 
taining any high position in his class; nor was any great love of scholastic lore a 
feature of his after life. But he had an inner life, little sympathized with then, 
as he rambled about the rocks of Kirkton, studying the strange metamorphoses 
they exhibit, and laying up a store of facts which were to bear rich fruit in his 
riper years. While at the University of Edinburgh, studying for the ministry of 
the Church of Scotland, he attended Dr Horn’s chemical class in 1802, and about 
this time made the acquaintance and acquired the friendship of THomas THomson, 
then a young and ardent lecturer on chemistry in Edinburgh, To this early 
friendship FLemine referred his fondness for chemical analysis, and gave THom- 
son the credit of instilling into him the opinion that chemistry was the only basis 
* King Henry IV., Second Part, Act 11, Scene 1. 
VOL. XXII. PART ILI. 8 H 
