42 BOTANY. 



seaweed, which had been washed by south-westerly 

 winds from the Gulf of Mexico.* 



Shells, and the mollusks which inhabit them, were 

 not, however, sufficient to occupy his attention. He 

 had plenty of spare time. Indeed, after his bread was 

 baked, his work was nearly over for the day. He had 

 to set the sponge at night, ready for next day's batch. 

 But that occupied comparatively little time. Meanwhile 

 he was busy with his books and his studies. 



He did not make any companions. He had never 

 felt much of the comforts of home. His social nature 

 had been almost soured there. The feeling never left 

 him, but clung to him through life. He therefore 

 roamed about by himself along the shore, or studied 

 by himself in his solitary household. 



He reverted to his study of botany, though it might 

 not be supposed that Thurso was a fit place for such 

 a study. The neighbourhood was without trees, with- 

 out hedges with only flagstones dividing one field from 

 another. Yet the seeing eye is never without proper 

 aliment. It finds wonders in everything. Where the 

 unseeing eye sees nothing, it detects differences, and 

 varieties, and classifications. But he did not as yet go 



* In a specimen of fucoid, about two and a half feet in length, which 

 I owe to the kindness of Mr. Dick of Thurso, there are stems continu- 

 ous throughout, that though they ramify into from six to eight branches 

 in that space, they are quite as thick at top as at bottom. They are 

 the remains, in all probability, of a long flexible fucoid, like those 

 fucoids of the intertropical seas, that, streaming slantwise in the tide, 

 rise not uufrequently to the surface in fifteen and twenty fathoms water. 

 HUGH MILLER, Rambles of a Geologist. 



