John Fleming (naturalist)

John Fleming FRSE FRS FSA (10 January 1785 – 18 November 1857) was a Scottish Free Church minister, naturalist, zoologist and geologist.

In 1814, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity by the University of St Andrews, and in the same year he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

[6] He died at home, Seagrove House in Leith[7] and is buried with his family in the western half of Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.

He is buried with his wife, Melville Christie (1796–1862) and son Andrew Fleming (1821–1901) (also a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh) who rose to be Depute Surgeon General of the Indian Army.

In 1824, Fleming became involved in a famous controversy with the geologist William Buckland about the nature of the flood as described in the Bible.

It explained the presence of fossils by climate change, suggesting that extinct species would have survived if weather conditions had been favorable.