William Ramsay McNab

In 1808, while at Kew, McNab's father, James, married Elizabeth (1777/8–1844), third daughter of Joseph and Judith Whiteman of London.

He then studied in Berlin for a year under Alexander Braun and Karl Koch and also pathological anatomy under Rudolf Virchow.

The McNab's family collections of native British plants have not been officially organised although many of their findings are of historical interest.

Their research includes rare and in some cases, even extinct species (see Nelson, 1995b) Upon McNab's return to Britain from Berlin, he became an assistant physician in the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries (1867–70), but he decided to abandon medicine in pursuit of botany to become professor of natural history at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.

"A thorough, precise laboratory demonstrator and a fluent, simple, entertaining lecturer, McNab is credited by the anonymous author of his obituary in Nature with introducing to British students, through his lectures at Cirencester in 1871, the incisive experimental methods of Julius Sachs (1832–1897).

As no detailed information has been traced about McNab's lecture courses at Cirencester or elsewhere, this particular claim to distinction is difficult to verify; there were others who pioneered the teaching of experimental botany around the same time, such as Thomas Henry Huxley at the Royal School of Mines, and Sydney Vines at Cambridge.

McNab has written many books during his lifetime including: "Botany: Outlines of Classifications of Plants", "On the discoveries of Mr. John Jeffrey and Mr. Robert Brown, collectors to the botanical expeditions to British Columbia between the years 1850 and 1866, ... on the cultivation of certain species" and his work was explained in the book "Guide to the Royal botanic gardens, Glasnevin".

At that time the collections were housed in the McNab family home in the North Dublin suburb of Cabra.

The weeks following McNab’s death saw most of his collection begin the move to the National Museum in central Dublin.

"Dear Dr Ball Mr. Dyer has written, asking if I will send some 50 bundles (No 4 in the advertisement) of the herbarium to Kew, for him to choose what will be useful to them there.

Before doing so, I should be obliged if you will kindly say, if you think I should do this at once, or should I ask Mr. Dyer to wait, till the new Professor comes, in hopes that he may wish the herbarium to be bought as a whole for the Museum.