SKETCH OF JAMES CROLL. 545 



Being afflicted from early childhood with a pain in 

 his head, he was not sent early to school, but was taught at 

 home. He afterward went to the parish school for a short time, 

 but showed little promise of scholarship, and never could acquire 

 an accurate style of reading or become even a moderately good 

 speller. He was withdrawn from school because of family exi- 

 gencies just at the time he was beginning to have a longing de- 

 sire for a better education. This had been awakened by the sight 

 in a shop window of the first number of the Penny Magazine, 

 which he bought ; and he continued to buy the successive num- 

 bers, and read them with zest. Shortly afterward he read Thomas 

 Dick's Christian Philosopher, and was struck with the novelty of 

 the ideas. He then procured other books on physical science, 

 among which was Joyce's Scientific Dialogues. "At first," he 

 says, " I became bewildered, but soon the beauty and simplicity 

 of the conceptions filled me with delight and astonishment, and I 

 began then in earnest to study the matter. . . . Even at the very 

 commencement of my studies it was not the facts and details of 

 the physical sciences which riveted my attention, but the laws 

 and principles which they were intended to illustrate. This neces- 

 sarily determined me to study the sciences in something like sys- 

 tematic form ; for, in order to understand a given law, I was gen- 

 erally obliged to make myself acquainted with the preceding law 

 or conditions on which it depended. I remember well that, be- 

 fore I could make headway in physical astronomy, ... I had to 

 go back and study the laws of motion and the fundamental prin- 

 ciples of mechanics. In like manner I studied pneumatics, hydro- 

 statics, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. I obtained assist- 

 ance from no one. In fact, there were none of my acquaintances 

 who knew anything whatever about these subjects." But he had 

 no taste for chemistry or especially for geology, and a suggestion 

 made at that time that he would one day be a professional geolo- 

 gist would have been repelled as incredible. Seeking for an oc- 

 cupation to give him a livelihood, he served an apprenticeship to 

 a millwright and worked for a time as a journeyman, repair- 

 ing thrashing machines on the estates where they were situated. 

 The conditions of this life were not pleasant, and he applied him- 

 self to house joinering, in which he had acquired considerable 

 skill, at Kinrossie, Glasgow, and Paisley. He had when a boy 

 received a hurt on his left elbow, from the effects of which he had 

 never recovered. The wound now began to assume a serious char- 

 acter, and he was obliged to give up the joiner business and find 

 some easier pursuit. 



Not having the education, qualification, or taste to be a clerk, 

 he concluded that some sort of occupation in the tea trade might 

 suit him. He went to Perth to see what could be done, and, ap- 



VOL. LI. i2 



