THE OPENING LECTUEE 199 
As regards the lectures, the arrangement was that he should 
deliver Professor Graham's own coui'se. As has already ap- 
peared, he early felt some doubt of their complete sufficiency, 
and even while still in France he contemplated using some 
of his father's Glasgow Jectures, as well as writing others 
of his own. But the event outran expectation ; Graham's 
syllabus was unsuitable. Some even of the most recent dis- 
courses were on budding and grafting, composed at a period 
when the appointment of a Professor of Horticulture was 
threatened. Thus he was compelled at the shortest notice 
to write new ones of his own in the scanty hours left by a 
multiphcity of occupations. He was slowly at work — with 
little progress for want of time and special books — on the Flora 
Antarctica ; was following a course of lectures on Organic 
Chemistry ; straightening out Professor Graham's affairs, pre- 
paring the campaign for the election to the chair of Botany. 
If the professors, for the most part, seemed to take little trouble 
to seek him out, Edinbui'gh society overwhelmed him with 
attentions. Some account of these things is taken from letters 
of the day, beginning with the first lecture on May 5, and 
Graham's extraordinary effort in presenting him to the students. 
My deae Father,— The weather being fine there was 
a tolerable attendance at the class this morning of about 
120 people, who came with itching ears to see a reed shaken 
by the wind. I plucked up courage enough to get through 
without any outward or visible signs of my own want of 
confidence in the treat I had prepared for them. 
It was my own composition, and I read it so fast that 
no one could follow me and find out the mistakes. 
And on the following day he continues the story to 
Harvey : 
I am lecturing away hke a house on fire. I was not 
in the funk I expected, though I had every reason to be 
in a far greater one. 
On my arrival here I found Graham very bad in bed, he 
had not been out of his room for weeks and did not expect 
ever to be again. The day before my 1st he took the deter- 
mination of going down to introduce me to the students, 
