Item D173 - Letter from W. Emilius Dubuc, H.M.S. Cossack, Cape of Good Hope, to John Hutton Balfour

Emile William Dubuc was born in Glasgow and showed an early passion for natural history. Educated at Dr Graham’s in Queen Street and then the Edinburgh High School (under Mr McMillan), he attended Dr George Wilson’s chemistry class in 1852, gaining a medal and first place at the oral examination. Still a teenager, he joined the Edinburgh Geological Society and made several communications.

At the University of Edinburgh, he studied anatomy under Professor John Goodsir in 1853–54, 1854–55, Summer 1855, 1855–56, and Summer 1856; on 11 July 1856, Goodsir examined him orally on the muscles and nerves of the larynx and the vessels of the brain. Dubuc distinguished himself in the Botanical Class and on field excursions, and took the first prize in Maclagan’s Materia Medica. He joined the Botanical Society of Edinburgh on 14 July 1858.

Dubuc graduated M.D. in 1858 with a thesis On Uraemic Convulsions, took the L.R.C.S. Edinburgh the same year, and subsequently the L.S.A. London. In October 1858, he canvassed for the House Surgeonship at the Gateshead Dispensary, styling himself a Visiting Pupil to the Old Town Dispensary and a Clinical Clerk and Dresser at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

He passed for naval service on 18 August 1859 and was appointed to H.M.S. Cyclops in the Red Sea during the Indian telegraph survey, taking every opportunity to collect specimens. In May 1860 he transferred to Trincomalee to join H.M.S. Retribution and was placed in full charge of that ship and of the hospital hulk Sapphire amid heavy sickness. After returning to England in December 1860, he was appointed to H.M.S. London at Malta, then to H.M.S. Impregnable at Devonport, and finally to H.M.S. Cossack as assistant surgeon. On 15 August 1861, Cossack conveyed Sir George Grey to New Zealand, where Dubuc was introduced to the naturalist Mr Layard and continued his collecting.

His health declined during the voyage, and he died on board Cossack at Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope, in late January 1862, aged twenty-four. Posthumously, his mother presented to the University Herbarium a named general collection in thirty-three boxes (with a mounted British set) and to the Museum at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh thirty fossil plants with fruits and seeds collected by Dubuc; additional specimens he gathered had already been sent home. (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 13 October 1858, page 1; “Opening Address, John Hutton Balfour,” Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 1863, pp. 407–409; Medical Times & Gazette, 12 April 1862, page 390; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 20 February 1864, page 8).

Biography courtesy of Michael Tracy