BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HEW SCOTT, D.D. The making of the Fasti Ecclesice Scoticance is a curious and stimulating- example of literary industry. Mainly the work of one man, it was the undertaking of a lifetime. Those who have tested the value of the work will best apj>reciate its magnitude, as well as the manifold difficulties which must have faced its projector. It was a toiler's task, possible only through much patient perseverance, and its completion after forty or fifty years' arduous labour was an achievement of infinite merit. As Dr Hew Scott's letters show, the strain was enormous, the sympathy depressingly sparse. At times there was disappointment enough almost to crush the eager spirit of the worker, and to put an untimely finis on his enterprise. Still he stooped to his self-imposed burden in the temper of which heroes are made. Year after year Scott pursued his remarkable perambulations, in the course of which he visited, he computed, about seven hundred and sixty parishes. He must have ransacked many hundreds of musty old registers belonging to every kirk-session and presbytery within his purview. As a probationer he began the Fasti, and as a veteran of eighty he gave the last touches to his opus magnum. Coadjutors were few and were mostly concerned with the first volume — enthusiasts like Dr Gordon of Newbattle, Dr Struthers of Prestonpans, and David Laing, LL.D., prince of bibliophiles. Laing may be described as prompter-in-chief. Indeed, but for him there would have been no Fasti at all. Soured at the lack of preferment, Scott volunteered for service in Canada, and was actually on his way to the boat when Laing met him and persuaded him to remain at home. Until he became the minister of a parish, the accumulation of material for the Fasti engrossed most of Scott's attention. He carried on researches in all the likely sources, copied extracts with minute, painstaking care, and left no stone unturned to ensure the thoroughness and completeness of his task. The