NATURAL HISTORY AT ST ANDREWS 279 



Professor Macdonald, who held the Chair for a quarter of 

 a century, was succeeded by Professor Alleyne Nicholson, 

 who had taught in Edinburgh, Canada, and the Newcastle 

 College of Science, and who lectured mainly on zoology, but 

 also on palaeontology and geology, in the former of which 

 subjects he had done original work of note. As indicated, 

 the class under Professor Macdonald had been free ; now a 

 small fee was instituted, and increased just before Professor 

 Nicholson left, after seven years' service. The professor had 

 no aid of any kind skilled or unskilled in performing his 

 duties, and from a difficulty in regard to administration, the 

 specimens in the museum were not at his disposal for teaching 

 or other purposes. 



On the transference of Professor Nicholson to Aberdeen, 

 the present professor instituted a class of Practical Natural 

 History in November 1882, and also had living marine things 

 under observation, so as to form a small marine laboratory. 

 The lectures were for the first time confined to zoology (includ- 

 ing palaeozoology), and this though it was understood that 

 the Chair of Natural History in St Andrews included not only 

 zoology and comparative anatomy, but botany, geology, 

 palaeontology, and mineralogy. Up to this period the class 

 had very little apparatus, no lecture-drawings, only a single 

 microscope, about a dozen microscopic slides, some jars 

 containing unmounted specimens of common forms picked up 

 on the beach after storms, and a few drawers of minerals and 

 fossils. The addition of two thousand five hundred spirit- 

 preparations illustrating the chief groups of animals, cabinets 

 of named foreign shells, insects, osteological specimens, 

 upwards of fifteen hundred coloured lecture-drawings (many 

 from life), dissecting and other microscopes, a cabinet of 

 microscopical preparations to illustrate the animal series, 

 besides a miscellaneous collection of apparatus of various kinds, 

 e.g. wood-blocks for issuing wood-cuts to the students, was 

 therefore a considerable advance. Much of the microscopic 



