body wearied beyond all calculation; yet it has to be done; those who have my interests at heart tell me I must not refuse a single invitation.
December 11, Monday. Though I awoke feeling much depressed, my dull feelings were soon dissipated by letters from my sweet wife and sons. What joy to know them well and happy on the 14th and 27th of September. My day was a busy one, and at seven I went to Mr. Lizars', having engaged to go with him to the Antiquarian Society, where I met many of my friends, saw a gun-barrel and other things that had belonged to the Spanish Armada, and heard a curious and interesting account of that vast fleet read by Dr. Hibbert, and saw the Scottish antiquities belonging to the society.
Tuesday, December 12. This morning at ten I went to the house of Dr. Brewster, whom I found writing in a large room with several fine pictures on the walls. He received me very kindly, and in a few minutes I began reading my paper on the habits of the Carrion Crow, Vultur atratus. About midway my nervousness affected my respiration; I paused a moment, and he was good enough to say it was highly interesting. I resumed, and went on to the end, much to my relief. He who has been brought up an auctioneer, or on the boards of some theatre, with all the knowledge of the proper usage of the voice, and all the aplomb such a life would give, knows nothing of the feelings of bashfulness which agitated me, a man who never looked into an English grammar and who has forgotten most of what he learned in French and Spanish ones — a man who has always felt awkward and shy in the presence of a stranger — a man habituated to ramble alone, with his thoughts usually bent on the beauties of Nature herself —this man, me, to be seated opposite Dr. Brewster in Edinburgh, reading one of my puny efforts at describing habits of birds that none but an Almighty Creator can ever know, was ridiculously ab-
