232 EDITOR. 



he proposed to controvert. Supper was his favourite 

 meal. At breakfast he hardly tasted food, a cup of coffee 

 and crumb of bread being the limit of his wants. After 

 working at his desk in the early part of the day, he would 

 walk out, make his way into the country, saunter about 

 the hills of Braid or Arthur-seat, with his eye on the 

 plants and land shells and geological sections, or explore 

 for the thousandth time the Musselburgh shore or the 

 Granton quarries. He never clearly admitted the canon- 

 ical authority of the dinner hour. He expected some- 

 thing warm to be kept ready for him ; but if the day was 

 particularly favourable, or if a storm had strewn the coast 

 with the treasures of the deep sea, or if some new phe- 

 nomenon struck him in connection with the raised beach 

 of Leith and required interpreting and thinking out, or 

 if he met with a brother naturalist and got into talk, the 

 shades of evening would be falling thick before he again 

 crossed his threshold. Even at that hour he had little 

 appetite. It was not until his brain, obeying what his 

 habits of night-study had made an irresistible law for him, 

 awoke in its fervour about ten o'clock, that he showed a 

 keen inclination for food. Porter or ale, with some kind of 

 dried fish or preserved meat, formed his favourite supper. 

 On these occasions he conversed with great freedom, and 

 found it both pleasant and profitable to have his views 

 and arguments vigorously controverted. There can be 

 no doubt that the extraordinary success of many of his 

 articles, the repeated case of their being the town-talk 

 and country-talk of the day, was due, in a considerable 

 degree, to his having beaten over the ground with Mrs 

 Miller. 



In illustration of his habits of composition as an 

 editor, I may refer to sundry slips which have been found 

 among his papers, containing what seem the outlines of 



