EDWARD FORBES 15 



natural science of those days. It is curious to recall now-a- 

 days, when we use the microscope so constantly, that the 

 study of histology and microscopic structure in general was 

 only introduced into medical studies, in 1841, by Professor 

 Hughes Bennett, who had been a fellow-student of Edward 

 Forbes. Forbes was, at Edinburgh, the centre of a group of 

 brilliant young men, some half-dozen of whom, after being 

 fellow- students, later on became fellow-professors in the same 

 university. Among these we may note John Goodsir, the 

 great anatomist ; Balfour, the professor of botany ; George 

 Wilson, the biographer of Forbes ; and Sir Robert Christison. 



Goodsir was Forbes's first and probably his best friend. 

 We are told that when he first called at his lodging he found 

 the future malacologist boihng in his kettle a rare mollusc, 

 Clausilia nigricans, he had found on Arthur's Seat, in order 

 to get the animal from the shell— and Goodsir thereupon gave 

 him a first lesson in dissecting a mollusc. We get curious 

 glimpses of student life in Forbes's accounts —which are 

 characteristically added up incorrectly — such as, " Leg, £2 ; 

 Church, 6d. ; Insects, 2/-." The " Leg " was, of course, his 

 " part " in the dissecting room. We are told he was one of 

 the idlest students of medicine Edinbiu-gh ever saw — which 

 is surely a strong statement — and yet we may be sure he was 

 always fully employed in some interesting study, literary, 

 artistic, or scientific. The point is that he was not doing what 

 he was intended to do, and in that sense his time was wasted. 

 He began each lecture with serious notes, which very soon 

 degenerated into caricatures of the lecturer and fancy 

 sketches of nymphs and gnomes. 



His friend, Hughes Bennett, who undertook to coach him 

 in anatomy, tells of the many dismal evenings of yawning 

 over the bones, and of how Forbes would arrange that jovial 

 friends should come in and interrupt, when the textbooks 

 and bones would be thrown aside and the rest of the evening 

 devoted to gaiety and philosophical discussions. After which 

 it need not surprise us that when summoned to appear for 



