YOUTHFUL EXCURSIONS. 5 



In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved 

 to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. Turning 

 this idea over in my mind, I felt that to be a pioneer of Chris- 

 tianity in China might lead to the material benefit of some por- 

 tions of that immense empire ; and therefore set myself to ob- 

 tain a medical education, in order to be qualified for that en- 

 terprise. 



In recognizing the plants pointed out in my first medical book, 

 that extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, Culpeper's 

 "Herbal," I had the guidance of a book on the plants of Lanark- 

 shire, by Patrick. Limited as my time was, I found opportunities 

 to scour the whole country-side, " collecting simples." Deep and 

 anxious were my studies on the still deeper and more perplexing 

 profundities of astrology, and I believe I got as far into that abyss 

 of phantasies as my author said he dared to lead me. It seemed 

 perilous ground to tread on farther, for the dark hint seemed to 

 my youthful mind to loom toward " selling soul and body to 

 the devil," as the price of the unfathomable knowledge of the 

 stars. These excursions, often in company with brothers, one 

 now in Canada, and the other a clergyman in the United States, 

 gratified my intense love of nature ; and though we generally re- 

 turned so unmercifully hungry and fatigued that the embryo par- 

 son shed tears, yet we discovered, to us, so many new and inter- 

 esting things, that he was always as eager to join us next time as 

 he was the last. 



On one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone quarry 

 — long before geology was so popular as it is now. It is impos- 

 sible to describe the delight and wonder with which I began to 

 collect the shells found in the carboniferous limestone which crops 

 out in High Blantyre and Cambuslang. A quarry-man, seeing 

 a little boy so engaged, looked with that pitying eye which the 

 benevolent assume when viewing the insane. Addressing him 

 with, " How ever did these shells come into these rocks ?" 

 "When God made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was 

 the damping reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might have 

 3aved themselves by adopting the Turk-like philosophy of this 

 Scotchman ! 



My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book 

 on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch sentence 



