14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. EL 



my paper in print ; but I believe Dr. Grant noticed my small 

 discovery in his excellent memoir on Flustra. 



I was also a member of the Eoyal Medical Society, and 

 attended pretty regularly ; but as the subjects were exclusively 

 medical, I did not much care about them. Much rubbish was 

 talked there, but there were some good speakers, of whom the 

 best was the [late] Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth. Dr. Grant took 

 me occasionally to the meetings of the Wernerian Society, 

 where various papers on natural history were read, discussed, 

 and afterwards published in the Transactions. I heard 

 Audubon deliver there some interesting discourses on the 

 habits of N. American birds, sneering somewhat unjustly at 

 Waterton. By the way, a negro lived in Edinburgh, who had 

 travelled with Waterton, and gained his livelihood by stuffing 

 birds, which he did excellently : he gave me lessons for pay- 

 ment, and I used often to sit with him, for he was a very 

 pleasant and intelligent man. 



Mr. Leonard Horner also took me once to a meeting of the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh, where I saw Sir Walter Scott in 

 the chair as President, and he apologised to the meeting as 

 not feeling fitted for such a position. I looked at him and at 

 the whole scene with some awe and reverence, and I think it 

 was owing to this visit during my youth, and to my having 

 attended the Royal Medical Society, that I felt the honour of 

 being elected a few years ago an honorary member of both 

 these Societies, more than any other similar honour. If I had 

 been told at that time that I should one day have been thus 

 honoured, I declare that I should have thought it as ridiculous 

 and improbable, as if I had been told that I should be elected 

 King of England. 



During my second year at Edinburgh I attended Jameson's 

 lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredibly 

 dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the deter- 

 mination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology, 

 or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel sure that I was 

 prepared for a philosophical treatment of the subject ; for an 

 old Mr. Cotton, in Shropshire, who knew a good deal about 

 rocks, had pointed out to me two or three years previously a 

 well-known large erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, 

 called the " bell-stone ;" he told me that there was no rock 

 of the same kind nearer than Cumberland or Scotland, and he 

 solemnly assured me that the world would come to an end 

 before any one would be able to explain how this stone came 

 where it now lay. This produced a deep impression on me, 

 and I meditated over this wonderful stone. So that I felt the 



