ch.il] EDINBURGH. 15 



at him and at the whole scene with some awe and rever- 

 ence, and I think it was owing to this visit during my 

 youth, and to my having attended the Royal Medical Soci- 

 ety, that I felt the honour of being elected a few years ago 

 an honorary member of both these Societies, more than any 

 other similar honour. If I had been told at that time that 

 I should one day have been thus honoured, I declare that I 

 should have thought it as ridiculous and improbable, as if I 

 had been told that I should be elected King of England. 



During my second year at Edinburgh I attended Jame- 

 son's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were in- 

 credibly dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the 

 determination never as long as I lived to read a book on 

 Geology, or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel 

 sure that I was prepared for a philosophical treatment of 

 the subject ; for an old Mr. Cotton, in Shropshire, who knew 

 a good deal about rocks, had pointed out to me two or three 

 years previously a w r ell-known large erratic boulder in the 

 town of Shrewsbury, called the " bell-stone ; " he told me 

 that there was no rock of the same kind nearer than Cum- 

 berland or Scotland, and he solemnly assured me that the 

 world would come to an end before any one would be able 

 to explain how this stone came where it now lay. This pro- 

 duced a deep impression on me, and I meditated over this 

 wonderful stone. So that I felt the keenest delight when I 

 first read of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders, 

 and I gloried in the progress of Geology. Equally striking 

 is the fact that I, though now only sixty-seven years old, 

 heard the Professor, in a field lecture at Salisbury Craigs, 

 discoursing on a trap-dyke, w T ith amygdaloidal margins and 

 the strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all 

 around us, say that it was a fissure filled with sediment 

 from above, adding with a sneer that there w r ere men who 

 maintained that it had been injected from beneath in a 

 molten condition. When I think of this lecture, I do not 

 wonder that I determined never to attend to Geology. 



From attending Jameson's lectures, I became acquainted 

 with the curator of the museum, Mr. MacGillivray, who aft- 

 erwards published a large and excellent book on the birds 

 of Scotland. I had much interesting natural-history talk 

 with him, and he was very kind to me. He gave me some 

 rare shells, for I at that time collected marine mollusca, but 

 with no great zeal. 



My summer vacations during these two years were wholly 



