THE MUSEUM. 11 



leave — a preparation still walking about in native fur or 

 exotic ermine. Our friend never became a great proficient 

 in comparative anatomy, and his collecting originated in 

 the desire to possess continually at hand mementoes of 

 the creatures which he had learned to love elsewhere. 

 On the summer evenings, when escaped from the High 

 School, or on the bright and ample holiday when Roslin 

 or Habbie's How was the delectable mountain of his 

 pilgrimage, and when his quiet gentle spirit had seen 

 the sights and heard the sounds unsurmised by noisier 

 comrades, he was glad to carry home a keepsake from his 

 own private carnival. The stuffed birds and rows of 

 beetles which he began to store up in his little sanctuary 

 at Queen Street, to Professor Jameson and the initiated 

 few would be " specimens," to the housemaid and the 

 irreverent many they would be "rubbish/' but to the 

 youthful compiler they were symbols and dear memorials. 

 Among the whistling blasts of October they brought back 

 the days of June, and they made mid-winter balmy. 

 That corn-craik recalled a cloudless gloaming, and, caught 

 as it was on Arthur's Seat, that Artaxerxes butterfly was 

 still surrounded with the whole panorama from Ben Lo- 

 mond to Berwick Law, whilst rosy reminiscences flitted past 

 from bees and burnet-moths with wings now motionless. 

 "Stolen waters are sweet," and such a collection is a magical 

 cup which, dry to the stranger, still overflows to the owner. 



