environment which acted upon this brain and brought out the capacities born in him without any apparent hereditary bias, and which might have remained entirely latent under less favourable circumstances. No small part of the development was due to the people among whom he lived; a race of men accustomed to rely upon their senses which were always with them, rather than upon books which they seldom saw, even if they were able to read them; and to observe not only all that lay around them, but also the characteristics of their fellowmen with whom they were brought into contact--the close contact of different classes which obtains in village and rural life. Simpson was taught to study Nature whether in field or fellow-creature first, and the knowledge and opinions of men as expressed in books afterwards. CHAPTER II. STUDENT DAYS. 1825-1830. Visit to Edinburgh--Sent to the University--Takes the Arts classes--Gains a bursary--Influence of MacArthur and Reid--Robert Knox the anatomist--The Burke and Hare murders--Superiority of the extra-mural teachers of the day--Edinburgh an intellectual centre--University life--His mode of living as a student--Apprenticed to a chemist--Studies surgery under Liston--Regularly falls asleep in the obstetric class--Influence of his teachers--Verse writing--Description of the medical student of the day--Vacation work--Death of his father--Obtains qualification to practice at the age of eighteen. Although Edinburgh was only eighteen miles from Bathgate, Simpson visited it only once as a schoolboy; probably he walked all the way, for railroads were as yet unknown and it was not a long walk for a country-bred vigorous youth. He exercised his already formed habit of noting objects of interest during this great event in his boyhood, and in his journal there are copies of old inscriptions from tombs in the famous Greyfriars' Churchyard to which he made his pilgrimage. The boy's nearest and dearest ambition was to become a student at "the College," as Edinburgh University was familiarly termed. It received encouragement in the periodical return to the village of elder boys who had gone up before him. He was specially struck, and afterwards stimulated, by the appearance of one John Reid, his senior by two years, and his former companion in many a country ramble, who came back for the vacations smartened up both physically and mentally by the new life.