PRESENTATION OF TABLET 59 



thrice weekly to the Fishers' Square, Footdee, to com- 

 plete their collections and to search for the rare speci- 

 mens to be found in the baskets of the deep - sea 

 fishermen. When there was difficulty in identifying the 

 specimen from the manual, it was taken to MacGillivray. 

 It was at times like these that MacGillivray was seen 

 at his best. Holding the specimen tenderly in his taper 

 fingers, and applying to it a lens, he would descant on 

 the difference or want of difference between a variety 

 and a species. These were the half-hours in which 

 Matthews Duncan, Thomas Keith, and Charles Murchi- 

 son received their first lessons in science, long before 

 they took to the study of medicine, in which they 

 afterwards became famous. It was then that the Rev. 

 Dr. James Farquharson acquired early that knowledge 

 which enabled him, when he had just taken his M.A. 

 degree, to conduct for more than two years the classes 

 of natural history and of botany during MacGillivray 's 

 last illness, and afterwards led him to take an active 

 part in the work of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club 

 during his forty years' residence in Selkirk. It was 

 under this sort of stimulus that Dr. Thomas Jamieson 

 of Ellon threw himself into the geological studies 

 which have since made him the recognised authority in 

 Scotland in regard to the alluvial deposits. It was 

 MacGillivray that led Andrew Leith Adams, son of 

 the great Banchory scholar, to devote himself when a 

 surgeon in the army to prolonged studies in natural 

 history, studies which led to his retirement from the 

 army to occupy a chair in Queen's College, Cork. In 



