402 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



be assumed to have crossed from Europe to both at a time when the Irish sea 

 and the British Channel were occupied by land which has since disappeared. 

 His doctrine also of zones of submarine life differing in character according to 

 the depth of the sea in which they showed themselves, has been referred to 

 by writers as first adopted by him in the Mediterranean ; but it is quite cer- 

 tain that it dawned upon him during these early dredgings along his native 

 shores, and it was reduced to writing years before he visited the JEgean. 



In November, 1832, he re-commenced the study of medicine, which was not 

 finally abandoned until 1836, and after that, his uninterrupted vocation was 

 that of a naturalist. It would have been strange if he had been a zealous 

 medical student, and in later years he deprecated all compliment to himself as 

 a model student. His note-books of that period are full of those grotesque 

 but pointed drawings which he was ever so noted for making. " Here and 

 there are copies of diagrams shown by the lecturer, such as the convulsed body 

 of a sufferer from lock-jaw, a bandaged or ulcerated limb, or the branches of 

 an important artery. Mingled with these, however, and quite overpowering 

 them, are likenesses of professors, lecturers, and students ; Dr. Knox, who 

 appears in many attitudes, being the favourite subject of portraiture ; sketches 

 of shells, flowers, crystals, imitations of children's drawings, and fantastic 

 imaginary figures innumerable. Whimsically various though these drawings 

 are, a certain medical tone prevails among them. A pedantic doctor flourishes 

 a stethoscope. A grim anatomist ' opens' a body in an unheard-of fashion. 

 A sick man makes wry faces over a physic bottle. Skulls abound. Skulls 

 laughing, weeping, wearing spectacles, looking wise, looking foolish, displaying 

 every human passion. Skeletons are not less abundant, and in the most lively 

 attitudes; gesticulating, dancing in couples, fencing, perambulating; more 

 like living men and Women who had adopted the Rev. Sidney Smith's recipe 

 against very hot weather, and for coolness' sake had undressed to their bones, 

 than the grim relics of the dead, at home only in the grave," 



In 1836, the death of his mother took away one strong motive for taking a 

 medical degree. He knew that his elevation to the rank and title of physician 

 would greatly please her, and he loved her too well to grudge the effort to give 

 her that pleasure. For five years he had nominally been training himself to 

 win an honorary title, and just when it was within his grasp, he flung away 

 his weapon and folded his arms. 



" To most but himself he seemed to have made shipwreck of his genius. He 

 had tried two professions and failed. Art disowned him ; medicine disowned 

 him. To be a virtuoso man of the world appeared the goal of his ambition. 



" So it seemed, but so it was not. His genius had reached its nadir, and 

 though none knew it less than himself, half its course was spent. It was from 

 this moment daily to mount higher and higher above the visible horizon, till it 

 reached, and for too brief a season shone forth from, the zenith. 



" When he parted from Pine Art, he uttered a good bye, not a farewell, and 

 in token thereof he took his pencil with him. When he parted from Medicine, 

 lie asked to retain his scalpel as a memorial of the art of dissection which she 

 had taught him. With these two simple tools alternately in his hands, and as 

 a guide and interpreter of both, the microscope at his eye, he had such a triad 

 of things as pleased his fancy and occupied all his faculties." 



His biographers now give us accounts of the student clubs he formed, and 

 of his vacation rambles, with details of his first years as a professed naturalist. 

 We have then his trip to the iEgean Sea ; after which his connection with the 

 Geological Survey began, and continued until his election to the chair of 

 Nat oral Eistory at Edinburgh — the city where two and twenty years before he 

 hail been a student of medicine. 



(t Measured by what he actually did in natural history, his name cannot be 



