David Landsborough

David Landsborough (11 August 1779 – 12 September 1854) was a Scottish clergyman and naturalist.

Landsborough was born at Dalry, Glen Kens, Galloway, on 11 August 1779. He was educated at the Dumfries Academy, and from 1798 at the University of Edinburgh. Here, partly by his skill as a violinist, he made the acquaintance of Thomas Brown, the metaphysician, and of the Rev. John Thomson of Duddingston, 'the Scottish Claude Lorraine,' from whom he derived a taste for painting.

Landsborough became tutor in the family of Lord Glenlee at Barskimming in Ayrshire, was licensed for the ministry of the Church of Scotland in 1808, and in 1811 was ordained minister of Stevenston, Ayrshire. In addition to his clerical duties, and while maintaining his scholarship by reading some Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, or Italian daily, Landsborough seems to have early commenced the study of the natural history of his parish and that of the neighbouring island of Arran, which formed the subject of his first publication, a poem in six cantos, printed in 1828.

He began his botanical studies with flowering plants, afterwards proceeding in succession to algæ. lichens, fungi, and mosses. His discovery of a new alga, Ectocarpus Landeburgii, brought him into communication with William Henry Harvey, to whose 'Phycologia Britannica' he made many contributions; while this discovery of new marine animals, such as the species of Æolis and Lepralia that bear his name, introduced him to George Johnston of Berwick.

For many years he kept a daily register of the temperature, wind and weather, and noted the first flowering of plants and the arrival of migratory birds. He also studied land mollusca and the fossil plants of the neighbouring coal-field, one of which, Lyginodendron Landsburgii, bears his name. In 1837 he furnished the account of his parish of Stevenston to the 'Statistical Account' of the parishes of Scotland.

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