Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/James Anderson (1.)

ANDERSON, James, LL.D., was born at the village of Hermiston, in the county of Edinburgh, in the year 1739. At an early age he lost his parents, who were in humble life, but this did not interrupt his education, and being desirous to obtain an acquaintance with chemistry as a means of professional success, he attended the lectures of Dr Cullen. Enlarging the sphere of his employments, Anderson forsook the farm in Mid-Lothian which his family had occupied for several generations, and rented in Aberdeenshire a farm of 1300 acres of unimproved land. But previous to this he had become known to men of letters by some essays on planting, which, under the signature “Agricola,” he published in the Edinburgh Weekly Magazine, in 1771. After withdrawing from his northern farm, where he resided above twenty years, he settled in the vicinity of Edinburgh, and continued to interest himself in agricultural questions. In 1791 he projected a periodical publication called The Bee, consisting of miscellaneous original matter, which attained the extent of eighteen octavo volumes. It was published weekly, and a large proportion of it came from his own pen. From this period till 1803 he issued a number of publications chiefly on agricultural subjects, which had no small influence in advancing national improvements. Dr Anderson, after a gradual decline, partly occasioned by excessive mental exertion, died in 1808.