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officer, zeal for the advancement of science, and the untiring assiduity 

 and exactness of his magnetic and other observations. The Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society, as well as the published results of the 

 Antarctic Expedition, bear ample testimony to his diligence and 

 ability. 



ROBERT JAMESON was born at Leith on the llth of July 1774. 

 Of his early years it is reported that he showed a decided bent 

 towards the study of external nature, and although he went through 

 the course of apprenticeship and college study then usual for young 

 men entering the medical profession, he never engaged in practice, 

 but devoted himself to the pursuit of natural history as the main 

 occupation of his life. 



The first fruits of his labours as an original inquirer were given 

 to the world in his " Outlines of the Mineralogy of the Shetland 

 Islands and of the Island of Arran," published while he was yet a 

 very young man ; and this was followed by a more important work 

 entitled the " Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles," and containing the 

 results of further local investigation. The success of these early 

 essays served only as an inducement to extend and deepen the 

 foundations of his knowledge, and with this view he spent nearly 

 two years in the great school of mining and mineralogy at Frey- 

 burg, under the tuition of the celebrated Werner. Returning 

 home from Germany, he was appointed in 1804 to the chair of 

 Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, which had be- 

 come vacant by the death of his early friend and preceptor, Dr. 

 Walker. When thus established as a teacher in the chief seat 

 of learning in his native country, he seems to have early entertained 

 the project of a great work on the Geology of Scotland, in which the 

 whole was to be described, county by county, and he made a com- 

 mencement with " The Mineralogy of Dumfries." From this under- 

 taking, however, he was soon called off to prepare various elemen- 

 tary and systematic works for the geological student ; and accord- 

 ingly a treatise " On the external Characters of Minerals," and a 

 " System of Mineralogy and Geognosy " soon appeared from his 

 pen, and, after a longer interval, his " Manual of Mineralogy and of 

 Mountain Rocks." He also contributed several articles on different 

 branches of Natural History to the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia and 



