402 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
be assumed to have crossed from Europe to both at a time when the Irish sea 
and the Britisli 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 ^Egean. 
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. Tor 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 Fine Art, he uttered a good bye, not a farewell, and 
in token thereof he took his pencil with him. When he parted from Medicine, 
he 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 ail 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 ^Egean Sea ; after which his connection with the 
Geological Survey be^-an, and continued until his election to the chair of 
Natural History at Edmburgh — the city where two and twenty years before he 
" Measured by what he actually did in natural history, his name cannot be 
