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this varied work, attended as it was with the enjoyment of the 
pleasures of social life, and with that of adding to those pleasures 
the charms of wit, of elegance, and manner of one who was equally 
at home, and even more happy, in the society of ladies and educated 
men than in the company of his home family of zoophytes, or other 
of the lower forms of living beings. 
Thus two or three of the earlier years of the public life of Wyville 
Thomson were spent. They produced many papers of great interest, 
which were published in the Annals of Natural History and other 
periodicals, and gave birth to very noticeable philosophical specula- 
tions on the development of certain medusoid forms, startling many 
older naturalists, and only partially accepted by others, such as 
Johnston of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and Edward Forbes, who con- 
sidered them too daring advances on what was then known of the 
modes of life of those beings. 
On leaving Aberdeen, Thomson had secured a large number of 
sincere friends to whom his departure was a great loss. His kind- 
ness of heart and his many estimable social qualities had made him 
desired in every circle, whilst in both the colleges to which he 
had been attached he was looked upon as a rising naturalist, des- 
tined to attain great eminence as years advanced. The degree of 
LL.D. was conferred upon him by Marischal College, Aberdeen. 
In Cork, to the duties of teaching botany, those of teaching 
zoology were added, and both were discharged with equal vigour 
and success. But other changes were awaiting him. Early in 
1854 he married Jane, the elder daughter of Adam Dawson, Esq., 
deputy lieutenant of the county of Linlithgow, and proprietor of 
Bonnytown, the neighbouring estate to Bonsyde. As the friend 
of the bridegroom, I had the pleasure of participating in the great 
gathering of members of the county families, and of Thomson’s 
numerous Edinburgh friends, to celebrate what was deemed a most 
auspicious union of two families, both held in high estimation by 
all who knew them. In the same year the chair of Mineralogy 
and Geology in Queen’s College, Belfast, became vacant by the 
resignation of Professor Frederick M‘Coy, who was elected to a 
professorship in the new University of Melbourne, and Thomson 
was then transferred from Cork to Belfast. 
The studies incident on the occupation of the chair of 
