IB THE OPENING LECTURE 199 



p As regards the lectures, the arrangement was that he should 

 5iver Professor Graham's own course. As has already ap- 

 peared, he early felt some doubt of their complete sufficiency, 

 and even while still in France he contemplated using some 

 of his father's Glasgow Jectures, as well as writing others 

 of his own. But the event outran expectation ; Graham's 

 syllabus was unsuitable. Some even of the most recent dis- 

 courses were on budding and grafting, composed at a period 

 when the appointment of a Professor of Horticulture was 

 threatened. Thus he was compelled at the shortest notice 

 to write new ones of his own in the scanty hours left by a 

 multiplicity of occupations. He was slowly at work — with 

 little progress for want of time and special books — on the Flora 

 x\ntarctica ; was following a course of lectures on Organic 

 Chemistry ; straightening out Professor Graham's affairs, pre- 

 paring the campaign for the election to the chair of Botany. 

 If the professors, for the most part, seemed to take little trouble 

 to seek him out, Edinburgh society overwhelmed him with 

 attentions. Some account of these things is taken from letters 

 of the day, beginning with the first lecture on May 5, and 

 Graham's extraordinary effort in presenting him to the students. 



My dear Father, — The weather being fine there was 

 a tolerable attendance at the class this morning of about 

 120 people, who came with itching ears to see a reed shaken 

 by the wind. I plucked up courage enough to get through 

 without any outward or visible signs of my own want of 

 confidence in the treat I had prepared for them. 



It was my own composition, and I read it so fast that 

 no one could follow me and find out the mistakes. 



And on the following day he continues the story to 

 Harvey : 



I am lecturing away like a house on fire. I was not 

 in the funk I expected, though I had every reason to be 

 in a far greater one. 



On my arrival here I found Graham very bad in bed, he 

 had not been out of his room for weeks and did not expect 

 ever to be again. The day before my 1st he took the deter- 

 mination of going down to introduce me to the students, 



