Bsli ] 178 • [March CI. 



all over the land, who had anticipated the pleasure and instructions from 

 hi< prelections, on which those in advance of them had descanted so 

 lovingly. 



Tn accepting his resignation, the Trustees made him Emeritus Pro- 

 fessor, but neither he nor they believed at the time that this honorary 

 distinction would soon be made aground for the resumption of his labors 

 at the very next session of the College. It so happened, however, that 

 the gentleman, Win. V. Keating, who had been appointed his successor, 

 and had set about preparing himself for his requisite duties, deemed 

 himself not strong enough in bodily health for their active discharge, 

 without being recruited by a visit to Europe during the summer, but 

 which he deemed it most prudent to prolong for another year. In his 

 emergency, an appeal was made to the recent Emeritus Professor to fill 

 the unexpectedly vacant chair, and thus repeat once more his lectures. 

 Before another scholastic year had begun, Dr. Ellerslie Wallace became 

 in due course of election the regular successor. 



At last Dr. Meigs found himself in the country-home of his own 

 creation, and free to pass his time in the pleasures of his books and 

 his garden. Of the latter he could say with Dr. Arnold, it was a constant 

 source of amusement both to himself and wife. Our people require to be 

 more frequently reminded of the observation of Sir William Temple, 

 that "gardening has been the inclination of kings and the choice of philo- 

 sophers, so it has been the common favorite of public and private men, 

 a pleasure of the greatest and the care of the meanest;" and, indeed, 

 continuing to use the illustrious author's own words, "an employment 

 and a possession, in which no man is too high or too low." But a sad 

 break was to be made in this united enjoyment by the death of Mrs. 

 Meigs, which took place on May 13th, 1865. 



With her loss he was left to cling more tenaciously to his cherished 

 studies and out-door recreations, while still separating only for a portion 

 of the year from his children and their families in the city, some one of 

 them having him at their homes in winter, and passing the summer with 

 him in the country. Desultory reading soon wearies, and the thoughtful 

 mind finds it necessary to pass even a part of the hours of leisure in 

 reading with a definite object, by bringing the res disjecta into shape 

 under a regular literary or scientific garniture. Deep research is not 

 called for to meet the wants of even an already well-read scholar, so 

 much as a method and classification in bringing the several topics and 

 facts in disquisition before him from day to day. Dr. Meigs gained fresh 

 pleasure from the garden, by uniting the study of vegetable physiology 

 with that of the natural groups in Flora's domain, and thus seeing the 

 relation of growth and the varied products for the gratification of the 

 eye and the palate, in flowers, fruits, and esculents. 



In ethnology, a new branch of anthropology, the subject of our memoir 

 took a deep interest, affording, as it does, such a wide scope for historic 

 research and inquiry into one's kindred in country and race, the origin 



