8 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



and afterwards for his university course of study at 

 King's College, which he entered when twelve years 

 old, just one year before the death of his father, who 

 was killed in the battle of Coruna in February 1809. 

 After finishing his arts curriculum and taking his JM.A. 

 degree there, he entered on the study of medicine. 

 While pursuing his medical learning he began, in 1817, 

 the study of zoology, his only guides, as he said, being 

 Linnaeus and Pennant, while he knew no one who had 

 any knowledge of the subject except a friend and 

 fellow-student, William Craigie.' 



During this period of study at Aberdeen he was in 

 the habit of spending his long summer holidays with 

 his relations in Harris. His journeys to and fro, in so 

 far as on the mainland, were always performed on foot ; 

 and in his book on British birds he gives a very inter- 

 esting and picturesque account of a walk on one occa- 

 sion during the night from Blair AthoU on his way 

 back from the West to the Wells of Dee, where he 

 had arranged to meet William Craigie on the morning 

 of the following day. Another very interesting excur- 

 sion to the sources of the Dee, while on his way to the 

 West in 1819, is narrated in his Natural History of 

 Deeside. 



During his holidays in Harris he devoted much of 

 his time to teaching in the school at Obbe ; and a local 

 tradition of him still is that he was a most attractive 

 teacher, often directing the minds of his pupils to those 



1 William Craigie afterwards emigrated to Canada and settled in 

 the town of Hamilton, Ontario. 



