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John Duncan (19 December 1794 – 9 August 1881) was a Scottish weaver and botanist. ==Early life== He was born at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, on 19 December 1794. His mother, Ann Caird, was not married to his father, John Duncan, a weaver of Drumlithie, eight miles from Stonehaven, and she supported herself and the boy by harvesting and by weaving stockings. He never went to school, but very early gathered rushes in the valleys, from which he made pith wicks for sale. During his boyhood he acquired a strong love for wild plants. From the age of fifteen he went as herd-boy to various farms, receiving cruel treatment. In 1809, Duncan was apprenticed for five years to a weaver in Drumlithie, a village of country linen-weavers. His master, Charles Pirie, an ill-tempered man who had almost conquered the celebrated Captain Robert Barclay Allardice, carried on an illicit still and smuggled gin. He was cruel to his apprentice; but his wife help him with reading. He did not learn to write till after he was thirty years of age. He obtained the loan of Nicholas Culpeper's ''British Herbal'', then reputed among village herbalists. In 1814, however, when his apprenticeship had still some months to run, he ran away and returned to Stonehaven, where he lived with his mother for two years. He managed to buy a copy of Culpeper, and he practised herbalism all his life. From Culpeper, too, and the astrology it contained, he gained an introduction to astronomy. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Duncan (botanist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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