SKETCH OF LIFE AND WORK 15 



attracted his attention by the way. He not unnatur- 

 ally, therefore, presented to Mrs. Barclay more the 

 appearance of a somewhat primitive Hebridean Celt 

 than of the Aberdeen medical student ; but the qualities 

 of head and heart soon made him a welcome guest and 

 friend. 



3. EDINBURGH PERIOD TO 1831. 



The third period embraces the eleven or twelve 

 years of his earlier residence in Edinburgh. He first 

 went there, he says in the preface to his Rapacious 

 Birds of Great Britain, on the advice of a friend, to 

 engage in " a kind of mineralogical speculation." The 

 friend was probably Dr. Barclay, whose father-in-law, 

 Mr. Walter Berry of Edinburgh, was much interested 

 in mineralogy. MacGillivray does not say what the 

 nature of the speculation was, or how it resulted ; 

 but he adds that he then attended the lectures of 

 Professor Jamieson, who at that time occupied the 

 Chair of Natural History in the University. He again 

 returned to the Hebrides, where he occupied his time 

 in "hammering gneiss rocks, gathering gulls' eggs, and 

 shooting birds"; but he got tired of that occupation, 

 which, although congenial to him, and was daily add- 

 ing to his knowledge of nature, afforded no means of 

 present livelihood or prospect of it for the future. 

 Besides having, on 29th September 1820, married Miss 

 Marion MacCaskill of Harris (he being then twenty- 



