658 MEMOIR OF REV. JOHN FLEMING, D.D. 
the recommendation of Sir Joun Srncxair, the Government had agreed to defray 
all the expenses of the survey; but, with the usual liberality of our Government 
to scientific men, the young minister of Brassay was left twenty pounds minus 
his expenses. In 1809, while still at Brassay, he considered himself labouring 
under consumption, and in the concluding passage of a letter to the late Dr 
Neti thus alludes to his condition :—‘‘ The very vermes which I am now so fond 
of examining will soon examine me—nay, consume me. If it must be so, I hope 
to die in peace.” 
But the vs medicatrix nature was strong within him, and he lived for nearly 
half a century after this, to do battle for the truth, and to crush many a crude 
hypothesis which authority had made current. Had he died then, BuckLAND’s 
** Reliquize Diluvianee’’ might have reached a third edition, instead of being 
recalled, and some of Cuvirr’s assertions have remained. unchallenged, or left 
perhaps for OWEN in our own day to refute. From Brassay, FLemine sent to the 
Wernerian Society a paper—the fruit of his rambles in his native county— 
entitled “ An Outline of the Flora of Linlithgowshire,” specifying only such plants 
as are omitted by Mr Licurroor, or are marked as uncommon by Sir JAMEs 
EDWARD SmitH. ‘This he stated was to be considered as the first of a series of 
communications illustrative of the natural history of his native country, and 
was the chrysalis of which his work on “ British Animals” was the imago. To- 
wards the end of this year (1809) he communicated to the same Society a descrip- 
tion of several rare vermes discovered by him in Shetland. ‘This paper does not 
appear either in the Proceedings or Transactions of the Wernerian Society. In 
1810, the parish of Flisk, in Fifeshire, became vacant, and the patron, Lord 
Dunpas, placed the presentation in the hands of Mr FLEmine, on the 30th of July. 
Having preached acceptably to the congregation, he received an unanimous call, and 
entered on the duties of his sacred office. In this comparatively civilised district, 
he found more leisure than in the wide-spread though thinly-peopled parish of 
Brassay. He was also near to St Andrews, so as to permit him to enjoy the 
society of many of his early friends who were there resident. Flisk is distin- 
guished as one of the smallest parishes in Scotland, and the least populous, as at 
this time it only numbered 213 souls. It neither had a village nor a resident 
proprietor. There was not even a baker or butcher, and, what is still more sur- 
prising, there was not a public-house in the parish. The stipend, though higher 
than at Brassay, was nearly as limited as the extent of the parish, scarcely 
averaging L.150 per annum, during his incumbency, and he often complained of 
the res anguste domi. In Flisk he spent twenty-two years of the most active, 
and certainly the happiest, period of his life. One of the first visits he paid 
after his settlement at Flisk, was to the manse of the adjoining parish of Kilmany, 
where Cuatmers had been for five years the pastor. We should feel ourselves 
unfaithful to the memory of Fiemine did we not take notice of three entries in 
a OG et ie le a i ee Be 0 i 
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