SIR ROBERT SIBBALD. 
‘27 
exciting Dr Sibbald to more particular attention 
to the study of Natural History. They had 
become acquainted while abroad, and congeniality 
manufactures, and natural history, of the countries he 
visited ; and after four years absence, returned in 1 667 
to St Andrews, where he commenced practice as a phy- 
sician. He brought with him from abroad a large collection 
of books, medals, mathematical, philosophical, and surgical 
instruments, pictures, busts, specimens of animals, plants, 
and fossils, a cabinet of simples for the Materia Medica, 
and other curiosities of nature and art. Here he first intro- 
duced into Scotland the dissection of the human body. 
He collected and investigated the indigenous plants of hi9 
native country, and was the first to disprove the absurd 
idea that then prevailed that the Lepasanatifera, or barnacle 
shell, was the origin of the Barnacle goose. He was also the 
first discoverer in the Scottish Seas of the Tetraodon mola, 
or sun fish. Removing to Edinburgh in 1670, he imme- 
diately obtained the first practice in the metropolis. About 
this time he united with Sibbald in the establishment of 
the Botanic Garden ; and afterwards promoted the New 
College of Physicians ; and after twenty-three years 
successful practice in Edinburgh, died there in 1694, aged 
sixtv-three. After his death, his library was sold, of which 
a printed catalogue was published in 1699, and his museum 
was deposited in the College of Edinburgh, in the hall 
which was afterwards the old library. There it was left 
to rot and decay, utterly neglected, till Professor Walker, 
on his appointment to the Chair of Natural History in 
1782, selected such specimens as time had spared, and 
placed them in the best order he could. And possibly 
some few memorials yet remain of what at the time Dr 
Walker states there is reason to think was the most con- 
siderable collection that was then in the possession of any 
university in Europe Professor Walker’s Memoirs, 
Essays on Natural History, pages 347, 369. 
