4 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
was appointed to be Superintendent of Statistics ; and, in fact, be 
organised that valuable department of the public service. He 
wrote much upon the subject of Vital Statistics. 
In 1846 he gave an interesting report on the mortality of Edin- 
burgh and Leith; and in 1847 published an inquiry into the 
sanitary state of Edinburgh, and the rate of its mortality since 
1780 ; and in 1851 he published his Vital Statistics of Scotland. 
He was also a contributor to the Transactions of the Royal Society. 
Ho doubt his writings are now very much superseded by the subse- 
quent works of such authors as Earre, Simon, Newsholme, and many 
others, but it behooves us not to forget one who led the way in our 
country, when Sanitary Science had not attained its present develop- 
ment and its strong interest for the public mind. 
Ecclesiastically he was a warm and thorough adherent of the late 
Rev. Dr Robert Lee, and was an elder in Old Greyfriars Church. 
From long-continued and depressing bad health Dr Stark retired 
from official duty in 1873. He thereafter lived quite in retirement, 
and died at Nairn on 2nd July 1890. 
The Rev. James Grant, D.D., died at Edinburgh on 28th July 
last, in the ninety-first year of his age. Dr Grant was long a notable 
personality in Edinburgh. He was a son of the manse, having been 
born in January 1800 at Portmoakin Kinross-shire, of which parish 
his father was minister. The elder Dr Grant was afterwards one of 
the clergy of St Andrew’s Church, Edinburgh, and was Moderator 
of the General Assembly in 1809. James Grant received his earlier 
education in the school of his native parish. He was afterwards a 
pupil of the High School of Edinburgh, subsequently went to the 
University, and having passed through the Arts curriculum entered 
the Divinity Hall, and in due time was licensed. He was, in those 
days of patronage, appointed in 1824 to the first charge of South 
Leith, he being then only twenty-four years of age. In this charge 
he remained till 1843, when he was appointed to the parish of St 
Mary’s in Edinburgh, and there he remained till he resigned in 1871. 
He was perhaps hardly what could be called a popular preacher in 
the usual acceptation of that expression, but his services were always 
listened to with much acceptance, because his sermons, like every- 
thing which he wrote or spoke, were characterised by great elegance 
of diction and clearness of utterance. Ho man in Edinburgh could 
