724 THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [May 1, 1900. 
allowed to repeat theCliurcli of England Catechism 
with a few other " whistle kirk" bairns ; hut tliis 
enlightened dominie was horrilied at the bare sug- 
gestion, and taking me aside, lectured me on tlie 
iniquity of belonging to such a sect, and said no 
creed containing such words as " Holy Catliolic 
Church" should ever be repeated in his school ! I 
ought to mention that this was in 1843, when there 
was a great upheaval amongst the Presbyterians, 
and anyone whose " effectual calling " was not in 
the orthodox form, was looked upon with grave 
suspicion. 
And here I may say ended my schooling and 
began my education such as it was and is. Scotland 
had doubtless a very admirable system of education 
and theology, and it was perhaps more niy mis- 
fortune than my fault that I did not profit by it. 
READING INDISCRIMINATELY. 
Thrown upon my own resources, I read 
indiscriminately every book in my father's house, 
at least such as seemed to me at all interesting or 
intelligible. Blair's Sermons and Boston's "Four- 
fold State " hardly came with'n that category ; but I 
found a perfect treasure in the gentle and scholarly 
James Hervey, whose " Reflections on a Flower 
Garden" I read and re-read with intense delight ; 
planted a little flower-garden for myself, and on 
summer eves sat therein poring o\-er my Hervey. 
Never had the tranquil and talented Rector of 
Weston-Favel a more devout disciple. Never had 
I seen a book better fitted 
" To form the taste and raise the nobier part, 
" To mend the morals, and to warm the heart." 
There was no mere affectation in my love for this 
author ; for on niy first visit to Aberdeen the only 
"fairin^' I purchased for myself, was six more vol- 
mes of Hervey, containing his delightful Tlieron and 
Aspasia and his defence tiiereof against the objec- 
tions of John Wesley. Looking back from to day, 
it seems strange pabulum for a boy of 13; but it was 
the first book to really influence me, and so dee(dy 
interested was I in my treasure, that as I walked 
home from Aberdeen I could not help sitting down 
occasionally by the wayside to dip into it. TUe 
classical footnotes, however, sadly puzzled me, 
and awakened in me an ambition to dip into, 
Latin, which I did with more diligence than success ; 
for my knowledge of Latin — never studied method- 
ically, — amounted to little moie than a string of 
roots, tenses and long words which, however, proved 
of use in after years. With French I was more 
.■successful, reading and writing the language with 
tolerable ease, though never able to speak it very 
fluently or intelligibly. The same may be said of 
my English ; proljably one of the many drawbacks 
of so-called self-education. I also tackled Trigono- 
metry and Land Measuring witii very fair success. 
A GRAND DISCOVERV. 
About this time I made a grand discovery. 
Speaking to a young ploughman, he remarked : " I 
fi\y, min, I could gie ye a richt book for naething if 
jou'd tak oot the lave o"t." He had begun taking 
it out in parts, but found the bookman's calls came 
at inopportune times, when he felt more in need of 
tobacco than literature. 1 closed with this offer, 
and the boy boasted how cle\ erly he had sold me, 
and freed himself of the tax of J.v. per month. 
The book turned out to be Oliver CJoldsmith's 
works, a perfect treasure and godseml to me ; not 
so much for the matter as the manner in which it 
was said. I at once became chai nied with a style 
of English I had never before seen or heard, and 
soon I became so thoroughly saturated with it, 
that to t!iis day I can scarcely scribble a line 
without fir.-t thinking "how would Goldie have 
said it." No other writer — with the exception, 
perhaps, of Thomas de (-iiincey, — ever fascinated me 
so much. Both may have been eccentric, but 
certainly gifted and inspired to a marvellous 
degree. Tha beauty of the prose-poems and neat- 
ness of the h'lniour was such as I had never before 
met with, while the descriptive notes of the latter, 
such as the scene ot Catalina's travels, is — as I 
discovered in after life— drawn with wonderful 
fidelity. 
BOTANICAL STUDIES. 
Goldsmith was followed by "Khind's Vegetable 
Kingdom," then looked upon as a sort of com- 
panion to "Animated Nature," and this book fixed 
my fate. Though not written like a "fairy tale," 
the Vegetable Kingdom was presented in a 
sufficiently attractive form to make plan:s, both 
wild and cultivated, from henceforth my chief 
hobby. The speedwell's peeping eye slied a new 
light from the hedgerow, the buttercups by the 
buriiie brink became something more than butter- 
cups to me, while exotics in the garden and 
window, even the fanriliar lupins, calceolarias 
and fuchsias had a life-history which it was a 
delight to trace, and I dreamed even then of 
visiting them someday in their own native 
habitat. 
Khind in due course was followed by Humboldt, 
whose " Geography of Plants" greatly interested me, 
and whose footprints on the slopes of the Andes 
I then dreamt of perhaps coming across. Mean- 
while, though looked upon as rather an erratic and 
somewhat " dowie lad," I \\as not lazy ; indeed, my 
little garden was already looked upon as an oasis 
in a wilderness ot moorland farms, and a neigbour- 
ing farmer seeing my industry, gave me off a corner 
of a field measuring perhaps quarter of an acre, 
