CHAPTER II. 
Glasgow, 1820-1840. 
Early in February, 1820, my father was appointed by the 
Crown to the Chair of Botany in Glasgow, and having dis- 
patched his library, herbarium, and household effects to 
London, to be thence sent by smack to Leith, and on to 
Glasgow by canal, he severed his connexion with Halesworth 
and the brewery. In May he presented himself before the 
Senate of the University, who gave him a flattering reception, 
read his inaugural thesis 1 (the Latinity of which, thanks to 
his classical father-in-law, was highly praised), and was duly 
installed, with the welcome addition of having the honour 
of LL.D. conferred upon him. 
Meanwhile the preparation for his course of botanical 
teaching, which commenced in May, had been for three 
months a grave anxiety. He had never taught, lectured, 
or even heard a course of lectures, and some important 
branches of the science he was called upon to profess were 
new to him. Such especially was the anatomy of plants, 
of which he writes : ‘ It is a subject to which I have never 
attended, and authors are so much at variance as to their 
opinions, and on facts too, that I really do not know whom to 
follow. Knight in every one of his papers contradicts what 
he himself asserted in former ones, and has got handsomely 
lashed for it in the second number of the ‘ British Review ’ ; 
as has Sir James Smith, for adopting his theories and for 
1 Of this thesis I find no copy amongst my father’s papers ; and in answer to 
a request that the records of the University might be searched for it, I am informed 
that it does not exist there. It was entitled De Laudibus Botanicis. 
