CHAPTER XXXIII. 



VISITS TO ABERDEEN FRIENDSHIP AND BOTANY. 



WHEN Charles Black was for a short time foreman in 

 Reid's nursery in Aberdeen, in 1 842, ever true to the higher 

 influences he wielded over all he met, he set himself to 

 the intellectual improvement of the apprentices, and helped 

 them in grammar and arithmetic, as well as in botany. 

 Amongst these was a lad with higher tendencies than his 

 companions, called James Taylor, seventeen years of age, 

 who then gained his first permanent impulses towards the 

 studies he afterwards prosecuted ; for, as he confesses, " It 

 was Charles Black who created in myself and others a 

 desire to know plants and a love for Botany." * Along with 

 some others, he also began Latin, assisted by a young man 

 who knew something of that language. He went the 

 following year to the Grammar school, where one of the 

 masters, Dr. Beverley, took a fancy to the lad, which 

 afterwards ripened into lasting friendship, and helped him 

 greatly in his studies. In time, James went to the Uni- 

 versity, and amidst difficulties specially known to Aberdeen 

 students and bravely Conquered by them, went through 

 his Arts course and entered on Medicine. Here he became 



* As Mr. Taylor says, " Charles Black was a centre round which 

 not a few aspirants gathered." 



