152 A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [ch. vi. 
early forties, and clergymen attended MacGillivray’s 
class in numbers to hear what science had to say in 
regard to the age and creation of the world. 
Professors came also; among others Professor 
Blackie, always eager for knowledge, enrolled 
himself as a student. In my own year, the late 
Principal Pirie, then Professor Pirie of the 
Theological Faculty in Marischal College, was a 
regular attender, and he gave a prize for a special 
examination in geology. But MacGillivray’s 
activity did not end here. His Manual of the 
Mollusea of the North-Eastern Counties sent many 
classical and mathematical students twice or thrice 
weekly to the Fisher’s Square, Footdee, to 
complete their collections and to search for the 
rare specimens to be found in the baskets of the 
deep-sea fishermen.* When there was difficulty in 
identifying the specimen from the manual, it was 
taken to MacGillivray. It was at times like these 
that MacGillivray was seen at his best. Holding 
the specimen tenderly in his taper fingers, and 
applying to it a lens, he would descant on the 
difference or want of difference between a variety 
and a species. These were the half-hours in which 
Matthews Duncan, Thomas Keith, and Charles 
Murchison received their first lessons in science, 
long before they took to the study of medicine, in 
which they afterwards became famous. It was 
then that the Rev. Dr James Farquharson acquired 
early that knowledge which enabled him, when he 
had just taken his M.A. degree, to conduct for 
more than two years the classes of natural history 
and of botany during MacGillivray’s last illness, 
and afterwards led him to take an active part in 
the work of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club 
during his forty years’ residence in Selkirk. It was 
under this sort of stimulus that Dr Thomas 
Jamieson of Ellon threw himself into the geo- 
