HOLIDAYS IN HARRIS 7 
his land journeys to and fro being always made 
on foot. 
While in Harris during these holidays, a good 
deal of his time was devoted to teaching in the 
parish school, and a local tradition of him is that 
he was a most attractive teacher, often directing 
the minds of his pupils to those aspects of Nature, 
both animate and inanimate, in which he was 
himself specially interested, dwelling much on the 
evidence of creative power and design which he 
found everywhere in Nature. Much of his holiday 
time was spent in watching, by night as well as by 
day, the habits of birds, and he often concealed 
himself for many hours continuously, now in some 
cave or rocky recess by the shore, from which the 
variety of swimming birds could be most readily 
seen, and again in some temporary shelter erected 
on the higher cliffs, from which the eagle, the 
osprey, the raven, and other predatory birds could 
be closely observed. 
While still continuing to devote himself to 
medicine with the view of following it as his 
profession, he began in 1816 the study of botany— 
the first branch of natural science to which his 
mind turned with special interest. 
In the first of the two MS. journals before 
referred to, he writes, on 30th April 1818, “ Botany, 
with which I began the study of Nature and which 
I have cultivated for two years, has been peculiarly 
fascinating”; and in a passage in his History of 
British Birds, describing an extraordinary night 
