98 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [WaniStolL
The cost to the Government of fencing in the
-ground, planting, &c., up to May, 1881, was
A6,000, while the purchase of Inverleith House
entailed a further expenditure ot &$,g50.
In the garden are several fine memorial trees,
planted by the late Prince Consort, the Prince of
Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, and others.
Mr. James M?NabwaslongtheCuratoroftheRoyal
I Botanic Gardens, and till his death, in November,
1878, was intimately associated with its care and,
progress. The sou of William M?Nab, gardener, a
native of Ayrshire, he was born in April, 1814, and
five weeks later his father was appointed Curator
of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden in Leith Walk.
On leaving school James adopted the profession of
his father, and for twelve consecutive years worked
in the garden as apprentice, journeyman, and foreman,
from first to last con urnore, gaining a thorough
knowledge of botany and arboriculture, and, by a
variety of experiments, of the best modes of heating
greenhouses. In 1834 he visited the United States
and Canada, and the results of his observktions in
those countries appeared in the ?Edinburgh Philosophical
Journal? for 1835, and the ? Transactions ?
of the Botanical Society.
On the death of his father in December, 1848,
after thirty-eight years? superintendence of the
Botanic Garden, Mr. James M?Nab was appointed
to the Curatorship by the Regius Professor, Dr.
Balfour. At that time the garzen did not consist
of more than fourteen imperial acres, but after a time
two more acres were added, and these were planted
and laid out by Mr. M?Nab. A few years after the
experimental garden of ten acres was added to
the original ground, and planted with conifers and
other kinds of evergreens. The rockery was now
formed, with 5,442 compartments for the cultivation
of alpine and dwarf herbaceous plants. Mr.
M?Nab was a frequent contributor to horticultural
.and other periodicals, his writings including papers,
not only on botanical subjects, but on landscapegardening,
arboriculture, and vegetable climatology.
He was one of the original members of the Edinburgh
Botanical Society, founded in 1836, and in
1872 was elected President, a position rarely, if
ever, held by a practical gardener.
In 1873 he delivered his presidential address on
? The effects of climate during the last half century
on the tultivation of plants in the Botanic Garden
of Edinburgh, and elsewhere in Scotland,? a subject
which excited a great deal of discussion, the
writer having adduced facts to show that a change
had taken place in our climate within the period
given. Few men of his time possessed a more
thorough know!edge of his profession in all its
.
departments, and to his loving care and enthusiasm
it is owing that the Botanic Garden of Edinburgh is
now second to none.
On the east side of Inverleith Row lies the
ancient estate of Warriston, which has changed
proprietors quite as often as the patrimony of the
Touris and Rocheids.
Early in the sixteenth century Warriston bglonged
to a family named Somerville, whose residence
crowned the gentle eminence where now the modem
mansion stands. It must, like the house of h e r -
leith, have formed a conspicuous object from the
once open, and perhaps desolate, expanse of
Wardie Muir, that lay between it and the Firth
of Forth.
From Pitcairn?s ? Criminal Trials ? it would a p
pear that on the 10th of July, 1579, the house or
fortalice at Wamston was besieged by the Dalmahoys
of that ilk, the Rocheids and others, when
it was the dwelling-place of William Somerville.
They were ?pursued? for this outrage, but were
acquitted of it and of the charge of shooting pistolettes
and wounding Barbara Barrie.
By 1581 it had passed into the possession of
the Kincaids, and while theirs was the scene of a
dreadful tragedy. Before the Lords of the Council
in that year a complaint was lodged by John
Kincaid, James Bellenden of Pendreich, and James
Bellenden of Backspittal, ? all heritable feuars of
the lands of Waristown,? against Adani Bishop of
Orkney, as Commendator of Holyrood, who had
obtained an Act of the Secret Council to levy
certain taxes on their land which they deemed
unjust or exorbitant ; and similar complaints against
the same prelate were made by the feuar of abbey
land at St. Leonard?s. The complainers pleaded
that they were not justly indebted for any part
of the said tax, as none of them were freeholders,
vassals, or sub-vassals, but feuars only, subject to
their feu-duties, at two particular terms, in the year.
Before the Council again, in 1583, John Kincaid of
Warriston, and Robert Monypenny of Pilrig, a p
peared as caution for certain feuars in Broughton,
in reference to another monetary dispute with the
same prelate.
In I 591, Jean Ramsay, Lady Warriston, probably
of the same family, was forcibly abducted by
Robert Cairncross (known as hleikle Hob) and
three other men, in the month of March, for which
they were captured and tried. The year 1600
brings us to the horrible tragedy to which reference
was made above in passing.
John Kincaid of Warriston was married to a
very handsome young woman named Jean Livingston,
the daughter of a man of fortune and good
