487 
of Edinburgh, Session 1874-75. 
burgh, a place justly regarded as an honourable object of ambition 
among the young aspirant^ in the Medical School. 
Eather more than a year after taking his degree, Dr G-rant went 
to the Continent, where he spent upwards of four years. During 
this time he visited various places of interest in France, Italy, and 
Germany, and made ^ pedestrian tour in Hungary; but his prin- 
cipal stay was in Paris, Eome, Leipsic, Dresden, Vienna, and 
Munich, on account, no doubt, of the varied opportunities for 
scientific study and general culture afforded by these foreign seats 
of science, art, and learning. He returned to Edinburgh in the 
summer of 1820, and took up his residence in his native city. At 
a later time he became a Fellow of the Edinburgh College of 
Physicians, but he seems not to have engaged in medical practice; 
his career had taken another direction. He had early imbibed a 
taste for comparative anatomy and zoology, and now devoted him- 
self assiduously to the prosecution of these branches of science, 
both by continued systematic study and by original research. The 
study of the invertebrate animals was peculiarly attractive, and 
at this time Dr Grant published various interesting anatomical 
and physiological observations on mollusks and zoophytes ; and his 
name will always be associated with the advances of our knowledge 
concerning the structure and economy of sponges, to the investi- 
gation of which Dr Grant at this time enthusiastically applied 
himself. The pools left by the retiring tides on the shores of the 
Firth of Forth afforded favourable opportunities for observation, 
and he would spend hours patiently watching the phenomena exhi- 
bited by these humble organisms in their native element. 
Dr Grant remained at Edinburgh till 1827, and in the mean- 
time communicated the results of his various scientific inquiries to 
the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and to the Memoirs of the Wer- 
nerian Society, of which he became an active member. He was also 
in 1824 elected a Fellow of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh. 
In June 1827 Dr Grant was elected Professor of Comparative 
Anatomy and Zoology in the newly founded Dniversity of Lon- 
don, afterwards University College. He was not altogether new to 
the work of teaching. He had some early, though brief, experience 
in Edinburgh in 1824, when Dr Barclay, who for some years had 
delivered iectures on Comparative Anatomy during the summer 
3 it 
VOL. VIII, 
