A MARTYR TO SCIENCE. 203 



Goodsir fancy ; there was nothing so tempting to him 

 as the investigation of organisms ; nothing so capti- 

 vating as the paths of discovery in natural history. 



Labor ipse voluptas might have been added to the 

 Goodsirian motto of Fidelitate ct virtute, for assuredly 

 he acted in accordance with both sayings, till at 

 length labour became a monomania that the most 

 intimate friends could not change. A gentleman 

 wrote him in 1848 — " Suffer a word of caution from 

 an old friend. It is better to live for the advancement 

 of science, than risk adding another name to the list 

 of its martyrs." A pupil in 1850, after expressing 

 veneration for Goodsir's science and philosophy, im- 

 plored him not to overtask and strain the natural 

 limits of his bodily strength ; and these letters were 

 but the echoes of many others from kind friends. 

 Had he husbanded his resources, mental and bodily, 

 after 1848, and sought the domesticity of married life 

 and the amenities of the social world, the rural 

 cottage in the summer months, with botany and horti- 

 culture as diversions, he might have been spared for 

 years, and benefited science more largely than he had 

 done. As it was, he lived only for science, and 

 unquestionably died in its service. 



