HIS INTRODUCTION TO HIS "ALTER EGO." 139 



Yet, unobtrusive and censurably retiring as he has always 

 been and quite unknown till lately dragged into notice, 

 four years ago * he is, as I then said of him, with bare 

 truth, an excellent botanist, knowing intimately all our 

 native plants ; a good geologist, possessing a large gather- 

 ing of fossils, and intelligently versed in the literature of 

 geology and its far-reaching problems ; a capital ornitho- 

 logist, knowing all our native birds by plumage, flight, cry, 

 and egg, and having a very complete collection of British 

 eggs ; a fair numismatist, with an unusual collection of 

 coins, home and foreign, ancient and modern, for a working 

 man ; an omnivorous reader, especially in theology and 

 natural science ; in short, an ardent lover and student of 

 beasts, and birds, and insects, and plants, and not less of 

 mankind. 



Such is a glimpse of the man to whom John Duncan 

 was introduced at Whitehouse, in 1836, which curiously 

 was also the year of the foundation of the Edinburgh 

 Botanical Society. Though twenty years his senior, 

 possessed of strong individuality and unusually varied 

 knowledge more or less scientific, and chastened by 

 sorrows the young man never knew, in making Charles 

 Black's acquaintance, John came and soon felt that he 

 came under the dominion of a nature stronger than his 

 own, and capable of moulding him powerfully and perma- 

 nently for good. This is saying a great deal of a man then 

 so youthful. But his strength had been already proved in 

 his study of Botany, and the skill he had acquired as a 

 gardener in so short a time ; and his geniality, tact, and 



* In " Good Words " for 1878, in which I gave a sketch of John 

 Duncan and his friend. 



