12 EAELY YEAES. 



As we have said, life and living things had the chief 

 attraction for our youthful naturalist. Sir John M'Neill, 

 the distinguished diplomatist, who subsequently married 

 his sister, was one of his earlier companions. " My ac- 

 quaintance with him/' writes Sir John, " commenced in 

 1810. He was then at college, and fully occiipied with 

 natural history — with entomology especially ; although 

 Professor Jameson seemed desirous to direct his attention 

 to his own favourite science. By Jameson he was led for 

 a time to the study of mineralogy and geology, and got 

 involved in the discussion then warmly carried on between 

 Wernerian and Huttonian theorists. In this controversy 

 he took with Jameson the side of Werner, and for a time 

 was rather keenly interested ; but to me and his other 

 friends it was obvious that his heart was still given to 

 zoology ; and this bias was shortly after confirmed by his 

 intercourse with poor Leach,* from which time forward I 

 do not believe he ever deviated into any other path. He 



* William Elford Leach, born at Plymouth in 1790, was brought up 

 to the medical profession ; but the same zeal for natural history which 

 drew Mr Wilson aside from law, diverted Leach from physic. In 1818 

 he obtained an appointment in the Zoological Department of the British 

 Museum; but in 1821, through a failure of health both mental and 

 bodily, he was obliged to resign his curatorship. He went to Italy, and 

 died there of cholera in August 1836. Besides editing the Zoological 

 Miscellany, he was the author of many papers in the " Linna;an Trans- 

 actions," and by his researches on insects, crustaceans, &c, obtained a con- 

 siderable name amongst naturalists. Amongst the few zoologists to be 



