180 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
impossible he could properly attend to his pastoral duties. Several meetings of
Presbytery were held on the subject, but the Doctor found ways and means to
smooth down the opposition; and he continued for some time to hold both
appointments. Owing to the discontent of the people, however, he found his
situation extremely irksome and disagreeable. A few years subsequently he
was happily rescued from his difficulties by the Earl of Lauderdale, who gave
him the church of Colinton, about four miles from Edinburgh; where, from
its proximity to the town, he could more easily fulfil the relative duties of his
appointments,
Dr. Walker may almost be said to have been the founder of Natural History
in the University. His predecessor only occasionally delivered lectures ; and
these were never well encouraged, owing no doubt to the little intereat generally
excited at that time on a subject so important. The want of a proper museum
was a radical defect, which the exertions of Dr. Walker were at length in some
measure able to rectify. His lectures also proved very attractive, not so much
from the eloquence with which they were delivered, as from the vast fund of
facts and general information they comprised. Eoth in the pulpit and in lecturing
to his classes, the oratory of Dr. Walker was characterised by a degree of
stiffness and formality.
In 1783, when the Royal Society of Edinburgh was formed, the Professor
was one of its earliest and most interested members. The opposition offered to
the incorporation of the Antiquarian Society, which principally originated in
the objections made to the delivery of a course of lectures on the Philosophy of
Natural history by the late Mr. Smellie, has already been alluded to in our
sketch of that gentleman.
In 1788 Dr. Walker delivered a very excellent course of lectures in the
University on agriculture, which is generally supposed to have suggested to Sir
William Pulteney the ides of founding a professorship for that important branch
of science. In 1792 he published for the use of his students, “Institutes of
Natural History ; containing Heads of the Lectures on Natural History delivered
in the University of Edinburgh ”
Although his talents for literary composition were considerable, it is not
known that the Professor ever appeared before the public as the author of any
separate work of any extent. With the exception of one or two occasional
sermons, and a very curious Treatise on Mineralogy, his contributions were chiefly
limited to the various learned societies of which he was a member. For the
Statistical Account of Scotland he drew up an account of the parish of Colinton,
in a style, and with a degree of accuracy, which fully proved the peculiar talent
he possessed for topographical and statistical subjects. He intended at one
period to have published a Flora of Scotland, but was anticipated by the Scottish
Flora of Lightfoot, Chaplain to the Duchess of Portland, who composed his
Flora during his travels in Scotland with Pennant,
Dr. Walker’s knowledge of plants was not altogether of a theoretical nature.
He made some good experiments on the motion of the sap in trees, which are
