SIR ROBERT S1BBALD. 27 



exciting Dr Sibbald to more particular attention 

 to the study of Natural History. They had 

 become acquainted while abroad, and congeniality 



manufactures, and natural history, of the countries he 

 visited ; and after four years absence, returned in 1667 

 to St Andrews, where he commenced practice as a phy- 

 sician. He brought with him from abroad a large collection 

 of books, medals, mathematical, philosophical, and surgical 

 ru-lim-eits, pictures, busts, specimens of animals, plants, 

 and fossils, a cabinet of simples for the Materia Medica, 

 and other curiosities of nature and art. Here he first intro- 

 duced into Scotland the dissection of the human body. 

 He collected and investigated the indigenous plants of his 

 native country, and was the first to disprove the absurd 

 idea that then prevailed that the Lepasanatifera, or barnacle 

 she]], was the origin of the Barnacle goose. He was also the 

 tirst discoverer in the Scottish Seas of the Tetraodon mola, 

 or sun fish. Removing to Edinburgh in 1670, he imme- 

 diately obtained the first practice in the metropolis. About 

 this time he united with Sibbald in the establishment of 

 the Botanic Garden ; and afterwards promoted the New 

 College of Physicians ; and after twenty-three years 

 successful practice in Edinburgh, died there in 1694, aged 

 sixty-three. After his death, his library was sold, of which 

 a printed catalogue was published in 1699, and his museum 

 was deposited in the College of Edinburgh, in the hall 

 which was afterwards the old library. There it was left 

 to rot and decay, utterly neglected, till Professor Walker, 

 on his appointment to the Chair of Natural History in 

 1782, selected such specimens as time had spared, and 

 placed them in the best order he could. And possibly 

 some few memorials yet remain of what at the time Dr 

 Walker states there is reason to think was the most con- 

 siderable collection that was then in the possession of any 

 university in Europe. Professor Walker's Memoirs, 

 Essays on Natural History, pages 347, 369. 



