18 EARLY YEARS. 



alternative of one who had no wish to be either a doctor 

 or a minister. He was about eighteen years of age when 

 he entered the office of Messrs Mackenzie & Monypenny, 

 and commenced the usual training of a prospective Writer 

 to the Signet. 



But shortly before this he had joined a more con- 

 genial copartnership. In 1808, Professor Jameson had 

 succeeded in associating with himself a few ardent culti- 

 vators of the natural sciences, and founded the Wernerian 

 Society. Its members were not numerous, but many of 

 them were men of high attainment. A few of them were 

 botanists, such as the venerable Dr William Wright, of 

 Jamaica, great in quassia and cinchona ; Hopkirk of Dal- 

 beth, the author of " Flora Glottiana," one of the first 

 attempts in Scotland to furnish a guide to the local ex- 

 plorer ; and Patrick Neill, whose proof-sheets used to be a 

 luxury to the scientific author, and whose horticultural 

 zeal made him a benefactor to his country. The zoolo- 

 gists were few ; but after the type of the founder, himself 

 a devoted pupil of the mighty Werner, the mineralogists 

 made a powerful muster ; the most ardent and assiduous 

 being the Rev. Dr Macknight, the most accurate and 

 masterly Dr Thomas Thomson, whose gruff, dry lectures 

 and clumsy demonstrations in chemistry still betokened 

 an autocratic ascendency, and crowded his class-room with 

 students who are now among the wealthiest manufacturers 



