58 
chequered life, as stated in this notice. It is obvious that Cormack 
never got into that steady sort of practice which fills the purse. 
His journalistic work was an impediment rather than a help to 
him. It is not easy to see why he did not succeed in practice, 
especially at Putney, where he had a good opening. It was not 
want of professional knowledge j his writings show that this was 
full and extensive. It was nothing wrong with his morale or his 
relations with religion, for although he did not carry a broad 
phylactery, or enlarge the border of his garments, he was essentially 
a quietly and unobtrusively Christian man. It is neither pleasing 
nor profitable to pursue this theme, and one can only fall back upon 
the trite expression of the country of his adoption, that he wanted 
the “ Je ne sais quoi the absence of which has hindered the 
success of many a man as full of erudition and observing power as 
himself. 
Cormack was a warm and steadfast friend, and the writer of 
these lines desires to record that this was the constant relation to 
himself of the subject of this obituary notice. 
Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, F.It.SS. L. and E. By Peter 
Eedfern, M.D. Bond. 
Charles Wyville Thomson was born on the 5th of March 1830 at 
Bonsyde, a small property in Linlithgowshire, which had long been 
in his family. His father was the late Mr Andrew Thomson, who 
spent most of his life abroad as a surgeon in the service of the 
Honourable East India Company. His mother was Sarah Ann 
Drummond, the only daughter of Dr Wyville Smith, Inspector of 
Military Hospitals. His grandfather was a distinguished Edinburgh 
clergyman, and his great-grandfather was “Principall Clerke of 
Chancellary” at the time of the Bebellion of 1745. His father was 
rather a strict disciplinarian, and expected to see successive distinc- 
tions at school and college following in the wake of the admirable 
education which he placed at the command of his son. 
These were stirring times for Scotland. Unembarrassed by 
troubles from without, her people were continually struggling for 
intellectual advancement. They furnished and maintained schools 
