8 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. I. 



she spoke earnestly to them of the sacredness of life, how easy 

 it was to take it away, but how far beyond the power of any 

 created being to restore it. George showed the fruit of this 

 lesson, by coming joyously one day to tell of a butterfly he had 

 saved from drowning in a pool of water. One life saved seemed 

 in the child's estimation to atone in part for those taken away. 

 On going to bed his mother found a scrap of paper under her 

 pillow, containing in verse the butterfly's thanks to its preserver. 

 " The tender heart which was afterwards to plead so earnestly 

 with medical students against the cruelty of reckless vivisection, 

 was here revealed I" 1 



More pleasantly was humanity cultivated by the encourage- 

 ment of pets of all kinds. Hedgehogs reposed in undiscover- 

 able corners in the daytime, and appeared at twilight to be fed. 

 Tortoises made the recesses of the old-fashioned grates their 

 bed-chambers, coming out to be regaled with grapes and dande- 

 lion leaves. In short, it was an understood fact, that no pet 

 could come amiss to the household, so strongly did a love for 

 animals pervade the family. One favourite, at the time we now 

 speak of, was a large rough bull-terrier, of no great beauty. 

 Duff had been intended to act as watch- dog, but he soon came 

 to the conclusion that watching his master's children was the 

 duty nearest his heart, if not his conscience, and he was skilful 

 in evading all other demands on his talents. Jessie, when able 

 to walk alone, liked nothing better than to go to sleep with her 

 little arms round his soft fat neck. One day an alarm was 

 raised that baby was missing. In vain every room was searched, 

 till by chance some one looked underneath a table, where she 

 lay sleeping in the favourite fashion, Duff waiting in motionless 

 patience till it should please his little mistress to release him. 

 By the death of a maternal aunt, four cousins were about this 

 time left orphans, and became domesticated with the Wilsons. 



i 'Macmillan's Magazine/ January 1860. 



In a letter, dated Feb. 22, 1855, the following sentence occurs: "I had the 

 happiness, when a boy, to have a mother who sedulously encouraged her children 

 to be naturalists, and made me when at school the passionate lover of God's 

 works, which in maturer years I have learned still more to be." 



And to Mrs. Day, St. Andrews, he says, in 1850 : " Much of my delight as a child 

 arose out of natural history. It gives food to the imagination, and tempers the fairy 

 books, of which too many cannot be given to children." 



