BOTANICAL EXCURSIONS. 141 



snoring Mr Wilson used merrily to describe as something 

 prodigious. The first night he kept the whole party awake 

 listening to his astounding performances. The second 

 night he was voted into a separate room, along with a 

 deaf old gardener who was proof against ordinary noises. 

 In the morning his room-mate was asked how he had 

 slept. " I never slept a wink. He gart the very bed dirl 

 under him/* At last it became needful to extort a 

 solemn pledge that, by way of giving all his neighbours 

 a chance, the gallant captain would not lay his head on 

 the pillow till quarter an hour after his comrades — a 

 pledge which he kept with gay good humour, sitting up, 

 stop-watch in hand, till the company had a fair start of 

 fifteen minutes ; but woe betide the luckless wretch who 

 could not gain the arms of Morpheus before Triton 

 sounded his trumpet. 



In those excursions he had many delightful associates, 

 and there he commenced a life-long acquaintance with 

 Professor Balfour, with the late Martin Barry, one of the 

 manliest of Quakers and most endearing of men,^ and 

 with the highly-gifted Edward Forbes. Speaking of the 



* That is, the diapason made the very bed-stead tingle. 



+ Dr Martin Barry pub.ished in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 

 (new series., vol. xviii. p. 100) an ascent of Mont Blanc which he ac- 

 complished Sept. 18, 1834, when such an exploit was not the occurrence 

 of every Geason. He was the twentieth individual and the twelfth 

 Englishman who succeeded in reaching the summit. 



