64 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



Fame. He succeeded, and he deserved to succeed. 

 He who left his own city, a young Aberdonian, without 

 wealth and without friends, returned to Aberdeen the 

 Professor of Natural History, with a name among the 

 mighty men, and with a great career stretching before 

 him. For eleven years he taught and laboured — 

 observing, classifying, studying, and writing ; his the 

 pen of the ready writer, and his the tongue ready like 

 the pen. Eleven years only, and at fifty-six he was not. 

 A long life was not his ; yet, if we count time by heart- 

 throbs, by feelings, not by figures on a dial, how much 

 and how worthily had he lived ! Some of his old 

 students — two of them you have mentioned to-day — 

 Dr. Mair and Dr. Farquharson — have been my warm 

 friends ; and the enthusiasm with which they recall his 

 magnetic personaUty, his luminous exposition, his walks 

 and talks as he led them afield, and showed them the 

 things of interest and beauty about the paths they trod, 

 is in itself a testimony to the manner of man he was. 

 It is strange, indeed, that for forty-eight years the grave 

 in the New Calton Burying - Ground in Edinburgh 

 should have been left unmarked except by the two 

 letters, W. INI., on the low corner-stones. He did not 

 need a monument. His voluminous works, placing him 

 in the forefront of British naturalists, are a monument 

 more enduring than bronze or even granite ; and 

 there is a suggestion of him in every trill of the Uttle 

 songsters which he loved, and whose ways and story he 

 has so graphically unfolded. But why was it, we are 

 tempted to ask, that those who knew him allowed nearly 



