CHAPTER IV 
CONSERVATOR OF THE MUSEUM OF THE EDINBURGH 
COLLEGE OF SURGEONS FROM 1881 TO 1841— 
“ HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS ” — AUDUBON’S 
“ BIRDS OF AMERICA,” ETC. 
MacGillivray further writes in the preface to his 
Rapacious Birds :— 
“In 1830 I became a candidate for the con¬ 
servatorship of the Museum of the College. of 
Surgeons, which somehow, without my being 
acquainted with three members of that learned and 
most respectable body, and without soliciting the 
vote of one individual, I unexpectedly obtained, 
and continue to discharge the duties, not neglecting 
the opportunities of improving my anatomical 
knowledge afforded by the numerous skeletons of 
birds and other animals in that valuable collection. 
During the whole of this time, excepting about a 
year, when hope seemed almost to have deserted 
me, and when I had resolved simply to go through 
the drudgery of my duty, I have been more or less 
attracted to the study of ornithology.” 
In 1831 he was unanimously chosen from 
amongst ten applicants for the position of Con¬ 
servator of the Museum, his immediate predecessor 
in that office having been the well-remembered Dr 
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