SKETCH OF LIFE AND WORK 25 



Natural History in Marischal College, together with 

 their best wishes for his comfort and success in that 

 new department of public duty." 



Thus ended MacGillivray's career in connection 

 with the Edinburgh College of Surgeons, in the course 

 of which he had shown in a marked degree those 

 qualities which specially fitted him for the higher sphere 

 of usefulness in connection with the science to which 

 his heart, head, and time had been so zealously and so 

 exclusively devoted for upwards of twenty years ; and 

 then began thejifth and final period of his life's work. 



His name had already become famous as an orni- 

 thologist by the publication of the first three volumes 

 of his History of British Birds ; but before referring 

 specially to that final period, some account must be 

 given of his other work during the ten years of his 

 connection with the Museum. 



These museum duties constant and arduous as they 

 were, and much as they occupied his time and thought 

 formed but a part of the work accomplished by him 

 during that fourth period of his life. Besides his lectures 

 on natural history, many contributions to scientific 

 periodicals, including the article " Ornithology " to the 

 seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the 

 editing of the Edinburgh Journal of Natural History 

 and Physical Science, from 1835 to 1840, the editing of 

 new editions of several books on natural science, writing 

 a condensation of Alexander Von Humboldt's travels, 

 the lives of eminent zoologists, Descriptions of the 

 Rapacious Birds of Great Britain, published in 1836, 



