Inteod. 
YOUTHFUL EXCUESIONS. 
5 
In the glow of love which Christianity inspireSj I soon resolved 
to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. Turning 
this idea over in my mind, I felt that to be a pioneer of Chris¬ 
tianity in China might lead to the material benefit of some 
portions of that immense empire; and therefore set myself to 
obtain a medical education, in order to be qualified for that 
enterprise. 
In recognising the plants pointed out in my first medical book, 
that extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, Culpeper’s 
^ Herbal,’ I had the guidance of a book on the plants of Lanark¬ 
shire, by Patrick. Limited as my time was, I found opportunities 
to scour the whole country-side, collecting simples.” Deep and 
anxious were my studies on the still deeper and more perplexing 
profundities of astrology, and I believe I got as far into that 
abyss of fantasies as my author said he dared to lead me. It 
seemed perilous ground^ to tread on farther, for the dark hint 
seemed to my youthful mind to loom towards “ selling soul and 
body to the devd,” as the price of the unfathomable know¬ 
ledge of the stars. These excursions, often in company with 
brothers, one now in Canada, and the other a clergyman in the 
United States, gratified my intense love of nature; and though 
we generally returned so unmercifully hungry and fatigued that 
the embryo parson shed tears, yet we discovered so many to us 
new and interesting things, that he was always as eager to join 
us next time as he was the last. 
On one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone quarry 
—-long before geology was so popular as it is now. It is 
impossible to describe the delight and wonder with which I began 
to collect the shells found in the carboniferous limestone which 
crops out in High Blantyre and Cambuslang. A quarryman, 
seeing a little boy so engaged, looked with that pitying eye 
which the benevolent assume when viewing the insane. Ad¬ 
dressing him with, How ever did these shells come into these 
rocks ? ” “ When God made the rocks, he made the shells in 
them,” was the damping reply. What a deal of trouble geolo¬ 
gists might have saved themselves by adopting the Turk-like 
philosophy of this Scotchman! 
My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book 
on a portion of the spinning jenny, so that I could catch sentence 
