JOHN HUNTER: LL.D. (1745-1837), classical scholar was born in the autumn of 1745 at Closeburn, Dumfriesshire, his father, it is said, being a farmer there. Although left an orphan in boyhood, he received a good elementary education before entering Edinburgh University, where he was a distinguished student, although supporting himself largely by private teaching. His scholarship attracted the attention of Lord Monboddo, who employed him as his private secretary for several years after he left college. In 1796, he published at St. Andrews a complete edition of Sallust, and in 1797 an edition of Horace which he reissued in 1813 in two volumes. In 1809 he published Caesar’s De Bello Gallico et Civilii Commentarii” (2 vols.), and in 1810 he sent out f in similar form his “Virgil,” first edited in 1797. He edited in I 1820 Ruddiman’s “Latin Rudiments,” adding a scholarly and logical disquisition on the “Moods and Tenses of the Greek and Latin Verb.” Hunter helped in municipal work at St. Andrews, and to him was largely due the introduction of the Pipeland Water Supply, which is still serviceable. He was an accomplished horticulturist, and a potato called after the “Hunter kidney” was long a favourite in Scotland.
