6 Biographical Memoir of 
tuition of Mr Wilson, there seemed very little to excite his 
attention. He was a notorious truant, so much so, that one 
of his father’s servants had more than once to accompany 
take him by force to the High School; and at that very 
time he would have spent hours reading the Three Hun- 
dred Animals, pursuing insects, or collecting the mollusca 
and zoophytes on the sea-beach. His heart was not in 
“ Amo,” but in Nature’s glorious works. 
He intimated to his father his desire to enter on the pro- 
fession of a mariner—and in this determination he was 
guided more by his ruling desire to study nature, than by any 
love for a mariner’s life ; but to this his father objected ; still 
the son was determined, and the good-tempered parent in 
time yielded to his son’s wish, and apparently did not try to 
thwart him. Man advises, but God determines. There is a 
turning point in human life, and here it was exhibited ; “ Our 
times are in His hand.” Some valued friends suggested to 
the young mariner that he might see the world, and the ful- 
ness thereof, by devoting himself to the study of the structure 
of man and animals, in health and in sickness, and so pressed 
on him the duty of yielding to his indulgent parent, by adopt- 
ing the study of Medicine as a profession, in which he might 
still carry out his idea of the happiness of understanding the 
works of nature’s God. He at last yielded, the maritime 
life was dispensed with, and he was appointed assistant to the 
late John Cheyne, Esq., surgeon in Leith,—and was a fellow 
associate with Dr Anderson of Leith, translator of Von 
Buch’s Mineralogical Description of the Environs of Landeck, 
and Werner’s Theory of the Formation of Veins. 
Mr Jameson thus commenced a study not congenial to his 
taste, and a surgeon’s assistant was not the best postion 
to reconcile him to his situation. 3 
At this period of his life, 1792, he had become acquainted 
with Dr Walker, then Professor of Natural History in the Col- 
lege of Edinburgh, under whom he commenced his hard study 
of nature. He attended one course of his lectures on Natu- 
ral History in 1792; another in 1793. He soon became a fa- 
vourite pupil, and shortly afterwards the charge of the museum 
was committed to him. At times when his dutics permitted, 
