amply qualified to narrate the circumstances of his friend's 

 life. Mr. Smith readily entered into my views and wishes : 

 he procured from Mr. Clarke, the brothei'-in-law, and several 

 other relatives of our deceased friend, various documents, 

 and original mss., and journals, which they obligingly con- 

 fided to his care; and notwithstanding the laborious duties 

 of an extensive Highland parish, and much family affliction, 

 Mr. Smith has furnished me with the following interesting 

 sketch of the life and pursuits of Capt. Carmichael. — W.J.H.'] 



While it is highly desirable that every country should have 

 its just share of credit for tlie men of literature and science 

 which it has produced, there is no individual, considered in 

 himself, to whom the place of his birth has been less impor- 

 tant in forming his character, than the naturalist, and with 

 whom, therefore, it may be less necessary to record it. Not 

 because his life reflects no honour on his natal soil, nor 

 because he is himself insensible to the glow of patriotism; 

 but because the sympathies of the naturalist extend beyond 

 his own home, and Universal Nature claims his attention. 

 Amidst the multitude of organised beings, the individuality 

 of his own being is less to him than to others. His eye 

 ranges from pole to pole, while his hand is stretched over 

 mountain and valley, lake and wood, and the spot which has 

 presented him with a new genus or a peculiar formation, 

 becomes attractive to his thoughts as the dwelling-place of 

 his fathers. His breath seems as if first drawn where he 

 experienced the ecstacy that arises from the conviction of 

 having discovered what had escaped the observation of others, 

 and which stands hitherto recorded only in the annals of the 

 Almighty in creation. The naturalist thus becomes the 

 revealer, as it were, of a little world, wherein the Divine 

 power and wisdom are displayed in new relations ; and, while 



mountains near Inverary. Among other Muscological rarities, he has recently 

 gathered there Hypnum rufesccns and Hypmim Crista-castrensis, in fruit ; Gym- 

 nostomum Icipponicum, Griffithiammi and viridissimum, Weissia recurvata and 

 trichodes, and Grimmia torquata. 



