i.] PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD. 19 



became my first published communication to Brewster's 

 Journal. 



'In January 1826 I began to make a more elaborate 

 quadrant of copper. In May I got hold of the tables in 

 Yince's Astronomy. For long previously I had been in 

 the habit of picking up scientific information in Jameson 

 and Brewster's Philosophical Journals, which lay regularly 

 on my father's table.' 



r 2 



