1921-22.] 
Obituary Notices. 
371 
Sir John Rankine, K.C., M.A., LL.D. By The Hon. Lord Johnston, 
(Eead January 8, 1923.) 
The Royal Society have lost, since their last session concluded, a member 
who deserves to be held in special remembrance. 
The late Sir John Rankine, who died in the beginning of August 1922, 
though himself laying no claim to scientific attainment, always followed 
the proceedings of the Society with the sympathetic interest which he 
showed in all which made for the advancement of his fellow-countrymen. 
But his work, unremitting and effective, in other directions calls for 
more than a passing notice. He was not widely known to the general 
public, but no man of his day and generation was better known and more 
appreciated by those for and among whom his work was done, or has 
done more for the good of the community in which his lot was cast. 
John Rankine was born in 1846 in the manse of Sorn, of which 
parish his father, the Rev. John Rankine, was minister. His father was a 
member of an Ayrshire family belonging to the district of Maybole, and 
his mother of the family of Simson, well known and long established in 
Lauderdale. On both sides he was connected with the land, and back to 
the land he came with his brother Charles on the death of their maternal 
uncle, Charles Simson, proprietor of the small estate of Threepwood in 
Lower Lauderdale. This family connection with the land largely affected 
his future professional career. 
As son of Dr Rankine, a Moderator of the General Assembly, and, 
which is perhaps unique in the history of the Church, having as brothers- 
in-law two Moderators and a Moderator-designate, John Rankine, was 
as might be expected, a staunch supporter of the Church of Scotland. 
But, like many another son of the manse, he looked for his own career 
in the Parliament House. He studied in Edinburgh, where he took his 
degree in 1865. He attended the Law classes there, and afterwards 
followed an old Scottish practice, now obsolete, by spending a year at 
Heidelberg studying Roman Law. 
He was called to the Bar in 1869. He had but few opportunities as 
a junior of appearing in court ; and though, after publication of his first 
venture in legal literature, he was much relied upon as an adviser in 
chambers, he never as a senior counsel sought to enter the arena of the 
court, to which his urbane and placid disposition was not suited. 
