1832 S7. BOTANICAL CLASS. G7 



University botanizing parties, by those who have long received 

 their visits, is the best proof that the landed proprietors and 

 farmers, whose grounds were traversed, were willing to excuse 

 a little youthful folly, for the sake of the good which so largely 

 preponderated." l 



The advantages to the students were, however, very inferior 

 to those offered now by the liberality and enthusiasm of the 

 present accomplished Professor, Dr. Balfour. Instead of the 

 hundreds of beautiful diagrams, the profusion of specimens, the 

 carefully arranged microscopes, and the richly stored museum, 

 " it was a dispute among the students whether Professor Graham, 

 an accomplished botanist of his day, had six or seven diagrams 

 to illustrate the structure of plants. A microscope was never 

 seen in the class-room, and the majority of students could not 

 have told with confidence what end of the tube should be put 

 to the eye. ]STo instruction was given in dissecting or examin- 

 ing plants, further than by pulling them to pieces with the 

 fingers, and examining them with a pocket lens. There was no 

 subdivision of the class into sections, who, in convenient small 

 groups, could be tutorially taught from the systematic arrange- 

 ments of plants in the garden, or the rare exotics in the green- 

 houses. Finally, though every student was laudably encouraged 

 by precept, prize, and example, to collect a herbarium, and 

 preserve a hortus siccus of the smaller plants, a mausoleum of 

 the giants was unknown, and a museum for them would have 

 seemed to most like a sepulchre in the midst of a garden of 

 roses." 2 



George Wilson's hours this summer were very fully occupied ; 

 but while it was his custom to enliven the family circle with 

 details of each day's doings, humorously told, it was evident 

 that some mysterious work was going on, to which no clue was 

 given. At the close of the session, revelation was made in the 

 following manly record of hopes disappointed. The letter is to 

 his elder sister, then in broken health, and a guest at the 

 Cumbernauld manse ; though without date or postmark, internal 

 evidence leaves no doubt that it was written in 1836. 



1 ' Life of Edward Forbes,' chap. iv. 



