Rev John Fleming D.D., F.R.S.E.

Professor of natural science, New College Edinburgh. – This distinguished naturalist was the son of Alexander Fleming, tenant farmer of Kirkroads, near Bathgate, where he was born in 1785. Early in life he gave evidence of talent, and after a preliminary course of instruction at the local school he went to the University of Edinburgh to study for the ministry at the earnest desire of his mother. But the particular direction of his studies had been already fixed, as from his earliest youth he had devoted himself to the study of natural science, and in Zoology, botany and geology had already made some very important discoveries in his native district. What Gilbert White had done for Selborne it was Fleming’s ambition to do for his native county, and though that intention was frustrated by his early removal from the district he partly accomplished his design by his contribution to the Wernerian Society in 1809 of a paper on “The Flora of Linlithgowshire,” in which he embodied the result of his early researches. This, with other scientific communications, proves him to have been, even at that time, an ardent lover and earnest student of the gospel according to nature.

At the age of twenty he had already attracted considerable notice by the maturity of his attainments, so that two years later, when he was licensed as a preacher, he received a commission from Sir John Sinclair to undertake the survey of the mineralogy of the northern isles. This he willingly did, and while residing in Lerwick, the presbytery of that district, won by the rare attainments and agreeable manners of the young naturalist and preacher, offered him the charge of the parish of Bressay, then vacant, which he gladly accepted.

That same year, and while yet in his twenty-third year, he drew up for publication “The Economical Mineralogy of the Orkney and Zetland Islands” which still further enhanced his reputation. During his stay of three years in Bressay he contributed many articles of interest to the scientific literature of the period.

IIn 1810 he was transferred to the Fife-shire parish of Flisk, where he remained for eighteen years.

At twenty-eight the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by the University of St Andrews, and in the following year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The zeal and industry with which he pursued his favourite studies were phenomenal. The elaborate article on “Ichthyology” for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia was written by Dr Fleming in 1819, to which he also contributed two articles on “Insecta” and “Helminthology,” the result of keen observation and patient study.

In 1823, he published his great work, “The Philosophy of Zoology,” in which the most important of his discoveries and observations were contained. Its reception by the scientific world was highly gratifying, and amply compensated for the labour of many years which its production had entailed. It was translated into Italian by Zendrini, professor of mineralogy and zoology at Pavia, and drew from Baron Cuvier, and Dr Turton, the celebrated conchologist, the highest eulogiums on its merits, while by many competent judges he was regarded as the first naturalist of the age.

In 1828 he published “The British Animals,” a work to which, writes his biographer, “he had brought rare attainments in the knowledge of the literature of the sciences, and of the habits and habitats of the animals described, as well as of extinct species. It is not saying too much to aver that few, if any, recent British systematic naturalists have not been obliged to it. This is evident from the references to it in almost every monograph in different departments of zoology and palaeontology. It is in every sense a history of British animals; and the strong antiquarian tastes which characterized its author enabled him to bring illustrations from many remote sources.”

Assistant: "I think we should give up professor. 

I don't think we're going to find any fish fossils!"