| Administrative History | James Trail was born in 1851, son of Reverend Samuel Trail and Helen Scott (daughter of James Scott, minister at Benholme, and sister of Hercules Scott, professor of Moral Philosophy from 1821 - 1859). James Trail was Professor of Botany at the University of Aberdeen from 1877 to 1919 and took an interest in the work of his predecessor, David Skene, studying and indexing his papers. He was also a family historian and worked on the Trail and Scott genealogies. He died in 1919, bequeathing a great number of his papers to the university. The rest were acquired via the Department of Botany in the 1970s. There is a memorial window to him in St. Machar Cathedral, Aberdeen. |