200 EDINBURGH 
though no better and wholly unfit for tlie task. We all 
opposed it most strongly but unavailingly. A Fly was 
hired and Mrs. G. went too and sat in the back room. On 
the road we passed Principal Faith going down to hear me 
go off, and him Dr. Graham enhsted too. At the door we fell 
^oul of Arnott, and he and his brother also were impressed. 
We all went into the class-room together, myself like a 
candidate amongst his constituents. Graham first intro- 
duced me, he could hardly stand but did not faint ; the 
Principal did the same, myself looking like a fool and mutter- 
ing angry words to myself. After which I read them a 
screed on the influence of vegetation on creation, wholly 
opposed to Graham's teaching and doctrines, for he holds 
that plants and animals are in all functions precisely the 
same, and 1 that they are diametrically opposite. Altogether 
the being shown up as I was, and having Brown's far too 
flattering testimonial of my attainments and moral character 
read by the Principal, was hateful to me. 
The class is small apparently ; the room holds 160, 
but has never yet been full. I do not expect there will be 
much over 100 altogether. All hands are very friendly to 
me, and I suppose that I stand a good chance of being 
booked for exactly half my life in Edinburgh, for I shall 
never stay here more than half of each year if I can help it. 
Forbes ^ does not think of the chair ; he told me so the 
other day voluntarily, but that he would like that of Nat. Hist. 
Jameson's ^ — who has long been in most precarious health. 
1 Edward Forbes (1815-54) was a brilliant worker in botany, geologj', 
marine zoology, and palaeontology, who travelled widely in Europe as well as 
in Syria and Algeria, and was naturalist on board the? Beacon in 1841. After 
holding the chair of Botany at King's College, London, from 1842, he was 
appointed Paleontologist to the Geological Survey in 1844, leaving this for 
the chair of Natural History at Edinburgh in 1854. In 1853 he became Presi- 
dent of the Geological Society at the unprecedentedly early age of thirty-eight. 
His important paper ' On the Connection betA\een the Distribution of the 
existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles and the Geological Changes 
which have affected their Area ' (1846) dealt with a subject in which both 
Da^^nn and Hooker were then at work. Forbes was not only a witty writer 
and the genial founder of the Red Lion Club, but a personality equally beloved 
and admired. 
2 Robert Jameson (1774-1854) was appointed Regius Professor of Natural 
History and Keeper of the University Museum at Edinburgh in 1804. His 
main work was in mineralogy, but he also wrote on geography, ornitholog}-, 
and travel. With Sir David Brewster he was the joint founder in 1819 of the 
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal^ and for the last twenty-five years of his life 
sole editor. 
