8 The Scottish Naturalist. 



was that of Sir David Brewster. His biographer tells us that 

 the keenest disappointment of his life was his failure to obtain 

 the Professorship of Natural Philosophy in the University of 

 Edinburgh, when his successful competitor was a young man of 

 family, then quite " unknown to fame." It is explained to us, 

 that all Brewster's wonderful scientific reputation failed before 

 mere party or personal influence. This was not, however, one 

 of those cases in which, as occasionally happens, the successful 

 candidate was a comparative nobody : for the late Principal 

 Forbes unquestionably became a Physicist of the first class ; and 

 the reputation he built up for himself subsequent to his appoint- 

 ment may be held in a sense to have justified the selection. 

 None the less, however, was it the case that, at the period of the 

 competition, Forbes' claims were utterly trivial as weighed against 

 Sir David's ; and the cause of his success was not his superior 

 qualifications , but his superior influence. There is nothing, un- 

 fortunately, peculiar in this biographical incident, relating to 

 two eminent Scottish Physicists recently deceased. The same 

 sort of story has been told over and over again, — frequently to 

 our sorrow, and sometimes to our shame ! I have myself been 

 privileged to hear the plaint of some of our most eminent Natu- 

 ralists — living or now dead — as regards their non-success in candi- 

 datures for coveted vacancies — for which they were pre-eminently 

 fitted, — but in which they either failed in, or were deterred al- 

 together from, competition, by some of the irrelevant causes 

 before referred to.t 



Again, in connection with his Presidentship of the recent 

 meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, (August, 

 1870,) Professor Huxley's critics and admirers, in their bio- 

 graphical notices of the hero of the day, tell us how he 

 failed in obtaining the Professorship of Natural History in 

 the University of Toronto, which fell to the lot of a much older, 

 though less able, Naturalist ; and they do so apparently in or- 

 der to point out the blindness of the Canadians to their own 



+ It would, however, be invidious and improper to introduce incidents relating 

 to living Professors, or their Chairs, in illustration of my criticisms ; and I confine 

 myself, therefore, to circumstances that are already public property, having be- 

 come the subject of published record, in various forms of Biographical Memoir, 

 in Parliamentary Blue Books, University Calendars, or other printed official 

 documents. 



