Ch. II.] EDINBUKGH. 15 



keenest delight when I first read of the action of icebergs in 

 transporting boulders, and I gloried in the progress of Geology. 

 Equally striking is the fact that I, though now only sixty- 

 seven years old, heard the Professor, in a field lecture at 

 Salisbury Craigs, discoursing on a trap-dyke, with amygda- 

 loidal margins and the strata indurated on each side, with 

 volcanic rocks all around us, say that it was a fissure filled 

 with sediment from above, adding with a sneer that there wcro 

 men who maintained that it had been injected from beneath in 

 a molten condition. "When I think of this lecture, I do not 

 wonder that I determined never to attend to Geology. 



From attending Jameson's lectures, I became acquainted with 

 tho curator of the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards 

 published a large and excellent book on the birds of Scotland. 

 I had much interesting natural-history talk with him, and he 

 was very kind to me. He gave me some rare shells, for I at 

 that time collected marine mollusca, but with no great zeal. 



My summer vacations during these two years were wholly 

 given up to amusements, though I always had some book in 

 hand, which I read with interest. During the summer of 

 1826, 1 took a long walking tour with two friends with knap- 

 sacks on our backs through North Wales. We walked thirty 

 miles most days, including one day the ascent of Snowdon. 

 I also went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a 

 servant with saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns 

 were devoted to shooting, chiefly at Mr. Owen's, at Woodhouse, 

 and at my Uncle Jos's,* at Maer. My zeal was so great that 

 I used to place my shooting-boots open by my bed-side when I 

 went to bed, so as not to lose half a minute in putting them 

 on in the morning ; and on one occasion I reached a distant 

 part of the Maer estate, on the 20th of August for black- 

 game shooting, before I could see : I then toiled on with the 

 gamekeeper the whole day through thick heath and young 

 Scotch firs. 



I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot throughout 

 the whole season. One day when shooting at Woodhouse with 

 Captain Owen, the eldest son, and Major Hill, his cousin, after- 

 wards Lord Berwick, both of whom I liked very much, I 

 thought myself shamefully used, for every time after I had fired 

 and thought that I had killed a bird, one of the two acted as if 

 loading his gun, and cried out, " You must not count that bird, 

 for I fired at the same time," and the gamekeeper, perceiving 

 the joke, backed them up. After some hours they told me the 



* Josiah Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria Works. 



