THE GREGORIES ‘The moon’s on the lake, and the mist’s on the brae, And the clan has a name that is nameless by day. Then gather, gather, gather Grigalach!’ _The Macgregor’s Gathering_—SCOTT. The able Scots family of Gregorie can trace its descent from the Macgregors of Roro, the younger branch of the Glenlyon family. The name Gregorie,—which is the Saxon form of M’Gregor—had, most fortunately for its owners, been assumed before 1603, the darkest time in the annals of that clan. The proscription which then fell upon everyone bearing the name of M’Gregor could not touch the Gregories; but the change of name, which saved them from the penalties that fell so heavily upon their Highland cousins could not and did not alter their natures, and all the Gregories, with perhaps the single exception of the Dean of Christ Church, were at heart M’Gregors. Nothing that civilisation, education, wealth and society could do to modify their disposition was able entirely to obliterate in them the warlike character of their Highland forefathers. We remember this, and when in the nineteenth century we see a learned professor of the Practice of Physic beating his fellow-professor in Edinburgh University quadrangle, we know that he was not really James Gregory but James M’Gregor. The claim of the Gregories to recognition in Scottish biography does not rest on the outstanding genius of any individual member of the family, so much as on the number of great and brilliant men belonging to it, who have, in their day, formed and educated generations of the youth of Scotland. From the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, with a gap of only a few years, some of the Gregorie connection were professing either mathematics or medicine in one or other of the Scottish universities. They were great teachers, lucid, clear-sighted and advanced in their views, and naturally leaders of men. Galton, in his book on _Hereditary Genius_, in which he ‘endeavoured to speak of none but the most illustrious names,’ cites the Gregories as a striking example of hereditary scientific gifts. He considers that the mathematical power came into the family with Janet Anderson, who married the Rev. John Gregorie, parish minister of Drumoak in the year 1621. From these two are descended no less than fourteen professors, and as there is no record of special power in the Gregorie family till we come to the sons of John Gregorie, it may be taken for granted that the ability came from the Andersons, who were distinguished in the foregoing generations.