168 
the tortoise, 1 Caesar ’ the dog, ‘ Doodle ’ the cat, and occasionally guinea- 
pigs and urchins, had their freedom of run in the establishment ; the 
birds were caged, and the great eagle stood Prometheus-like on his 
Caucasus ; whilst shut up in the attics, or claiming part of the cook’s pre- 
cincts, and in improvised aquaria of vivaria, were frogs, fishes, molluscs, 
echinoderms, and various odds and ends of Invertebrata. These animals 
were nearly all meant for physiological observation, and occasionally 
furnished the anatomists with a blood-globule, a muscular fibre, and 
ciliated epithelium. As the ranks of this living motley fell away — for 
amidst such a marine, aerial, and land population life flowed and ebbed, 
and oft departed — the organisms, on ceasing their physiological functions, 
obtained the obsequies of the scalpel, the injecting-syringe, the spirit-jar, 
or macerating-tub ; and, as mementoes of once familiar faces, skins and 
crania for conservation might be seen hanging like banners on the outward 
wall or attic’s roof. This semi-menagerie and its mortuary relics, con- 
veying to more senses than one decided anatomical impressions, bore a 
faint resemblance to a portion of the monastery of the Capuchins in the 
Piazza Barberini at Rome, where, however, the genus homo, and not the 
genera animalium, constituted a more degrading demonstration. Along 
with household furniture, boxes, big tomes, portfolios, fossils, geological 
and archaeological specimens, were strewed about the rooms ; the finer 
sorts of things occupied shelves; and t£ese again variously set off by 
dried starfishes, shells, trophies of the chase, meerschaums, and the artistic 
or grotesque fancies of Forbes. As indiscriminate as the Paris chiffon- 
niers, the Goodsirs fraternity hoarded up organic forms and their special 
idols, till they realised what appeared to bystanders a chaos of natural 
history and domesticity only to be surpassed by the oddest curiosity-shop 
in the Cowgate of the ancient city. With the owners, however, there was 
method in the midst of strange confusion, besides much pleasantry in the 
conceit, and a kind of a;sthetic halo that crowned all the dust and cobwebs 
of their domicile.” 
There is one thing the biographer has forgotten here ; 
and that is a microscope. It was not one by Ross or 
Powell or Smith, but a second-hand one picked up by 
Forbes in a shop in Edinburgh. Be sure it was not a very 
good one, but, as Forbes used to say, “ It is not the object- 
glass at one end, but the head at the other, that constitutes 
the value of the microscope.” In this naturalists’ den 
might be met from time to time George Wilson, John 
Reid, Samuel Brown, J. Hughes Bennett, James Simpson, 
Martin Barry, John Balfour, James Wilson, David Page, 
the cook’s declaration that “Jacko” was chained up during the preparation 
of the “ gentlemen’s dinner.” 
“ Jacko,” in a roving humour, descended by the spout on the outside 
wall to a lower storey, and finding the kitchen window open walked in, to 
the great dismay of the female inmate. Knowing nothing of the curious 
household above, and being much engrossed, as nearly all Scotch folk were 
at the lime, with the threatened disruption in the Kirk, Mrs. looked 
upon the intruder, whose presence was as mysterious as his person was 
horrid in her eyes, as “spiritually uncanny;” nay, as “the chains were 
broken,” had not “ the thousand years” ended, and here was “Beelzebub 
Jiimsel’ !” 
