44 MEMORIAL TRIBUTE 



His students always held him in the greatest respect, 

 and many of them were warmly devoted to him. He 

 was accustomed to treat them as friends ; and one 

 former student, recently referring to him, says : "I 

 had a very great regard for him not only as an orni- 

 thologist but as a man. He was exceedingly lovable 

 and undoubtedly the first ornithologist in Europe, 

 and we were all proud of his fame. One thing 

 always made a great impression on me : he treated 

 his class as men and gentlemen, and we recipro- 

 cated his action. It was far otherwise with some 

 of the professors." Another Aberdeen student of 

 his day, but who was not in his class, lately a pro- 

 fessor in a Canadian university, now dead, writes 

 of him as follows : " He was about my own height " 

 (rather below medium stature), "firm of step, erect 

 of gait, as he trod the pavement of Broad Street or 

 wound his way through the Gallowgate to the Old 

 Town ; great of reputation among British birds, and 

 tireless, pedestrianising with his class among the hills 

 and heather of Deeside. He could walk the most 

 active of them into limp helplessness, and remain as 

 fresh as at the outside of the march." "Keep your 

 knees bent as you climb a mountain. You thus avoid 

 having to raise your body at each step," was his advice 

 to another student who had accompanied him in hill 

 climbing. 



Many others of his former students refer to him 

 in similar terms of warm eulogy, those features of his 

 character which appear to be most prominent in their 



