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A MEMORIAL THOUGHT 
Dundee may be apt to forget at times 
that she has at various times given to the 
world scientific sons, whose life-work de- 
serves something more fitting than a mere 
casual memory. Yet we are not altogether 
forgetful. Walking along the path o,n the 
west side of the Howff Burying Ground yes- 
terday, I noticed for the second year in 
succession a little posy of flowers laid on 
what is supposed to mark the last resting- 
place of William Gardiner, botanist and 
poet. 
This humble and whole-hearted lover of 
nature was born in a house at the junction 
of Tay Street and West Port on 13th July 
1808 — three days after the foundation stone 
of the Bell Rock Lighthouse w 7 as laid. A 
son of parents in humble circumstances, his 
only schooling consisted of a little rudi- 
mentary instruction in reading and writing, 
and at an early age he was apprenticed to 
an umbrella maker, and even after reach- 
ing the position of a journeyman his w 7 ages 
never reached a much higher sum than 10s 
a week. 
But his love for self-improvement, and 
particularly for botany, was intense. Pro- 
secuting his studies in the early hours of 
the morning, and in his somewhat scanty 
hours of leisure in the evening, he achieved 
an acquaintance with both scientific and 
general literature, that is amply evidenced 
in his notebooks and manuscript magazines 
now housed in the Dundee Free Library 
collection. 
' The Den of Mains, Will’s Braes, and the 
Law, which then yielded rarities that no 
longer exist, were favourite haunts, but 
his rambles covered a wide area, and Ben 
Lawers, the Braemar district, Lochnagar, 
and the Clova mountains were all explored 
by this ardent student of the beauties of the 
field and the hills, the fruitful results of his 
itineraries and his marvellous industry 
being recorded in his “Flora of Forfar- 
shire,” “ Botanical Rambles in Braemar,” 
“ Twenty Lessons on British Mosses,” and 
other books. 
Hampered throughout his career by 
lack of funds, Gardiner nevertheless 
pursued his outdoor studies with 
unflagging zeal. Nor was his in- 
terest entirely confined to botany. 
Zoology,' entomology, and ornithology also 
claimed his interest. 
His correspondents all over the country 
included such noted names as Sir W. J. 
Hooker, C. C. Babington, Professor Lind- 
ley, .Professor J. H. Balfour, Edinburgh; 
and Sir Charles Lyell of Kinnordy. 
After a series of years of such trying and 
exhaustive* work spent out of doors in all 
kinds of weather — for he missed no oppor- 
tunity of prosecuting his beloved studies 
in the open — this ardent gleaner in the fields 
of nature fell into ill health, and eventually 
succumbed to an attack of typhus fever, 
passing away at the age of 44 on 21st June 
1852. 
He was buried in the Howff, and no stone 
or mark of any kind indicates his final rest- 
ing-place. It is peculiarly pleasing to find 
that after an interval of 70 years there are 
still anonymous admirers amongst us of the 
life and work of William Gardiner, but is 
there none of the local scientific societies suffi- 
ciently interested in his fine example of 
noble achievement in the pursuit of science 
under adverse circumstances to start a move- 
ment towards obtaining some more perma- 
nent, if modest, memorial of one of Dun 
dee’s truly worthy sons? — A. 
X * ^ 
*0- 
