TWENTY YEARS” INDUSTRY 
115 
encouragement, and that his museum-work in 
Edinburgh, first in the University and then in the 
College of Surgeons, helped to develop the detailed 
thoroughness which is so characteristic of his best 
work, the History of British Birds. 
We do not know much in regard to the twenty 
years of MacGillivray’s life in Edinburgh, between 
his marriage in 1820 and his appointment to the 
Chair of Natural History in Marischal College, 
Aberdeen, in 1841, but it was marked by an extra¬ 
ordinary industry. He arranged, and catalogued, 
and added to the Museum of the College of 
Surgeons; he issued a Manual of Botany , an 
abridgment of Withering’s Arrangement of British 
Plants , a Manual of Geology , a History of British 
Quadrupeds for Jardine’s Naturalist’s Library, a 
condensed narrative of Humboldt’s journeys, entitled 
The Travels and Researches of Alexander von 
Humboldt , and a book on the Lives of Eminent 
Zoologists. From 1835 to 1840 he edited the 
Edinburgh Journal of Natural History and Physical 
Science , and evidently wrote a large part of it. 
He collaborated with Audubon in preparing his 
Ornithological Biographies , contributing with the 
pencil as well as with the pen. He also wrote 
Descriptions of the Rapacious Birds of Great Britain. 
Meanwhile he was devoting most of his time and 
strength to the History of British Birds , of which 
the first three volumes appeared during these 
arduous years. 
4 4 By his talents and industry he had won for 
