98 PRÆTERITA-I

used often to hear expressions of much affection and respect for Dr. Grant from my father and mother, coupled with others of regret or blame that he did not enough bring out his powers, or use his advantages.

Ever after the Dunkeld illness, Dr. Grant’s name was associated in my mind with a brown powder-rhubarb, or the like-of a gritty and acrid nature, which, by his orders, I had then to take. The name thenceforward always sounded to me gr-r-ish and granular; and a certain dread, not amounting to dislike-but, on the contrary, affectionate, (for me)-made the Doctor’s presence somewhat solemnizing to me; the rather as he never jested, and had a brownish, partly austere, and sere, wrinkled, and-rhubarby, in fact, sort of a face. For the rest, a man entirely kind and conscientious, much affectionate to my father, and acknowledging a sort of ward-to-guardian’s duty to him, together with the responsibility of a medical adviser, acquainted both with his imagination and his constitution.

112. I conjecture that it must have been owing to Dr. Grant’s being of fairly good family, and in every sense and every reality of the word a gentleman, that, soon after coming up to London, he got a surgeon’s appointment in one of His Majesty’s frigates commissioned for a cruise on the west coast of South America. Fortunately the health of her company gave the Doctor little to do professionally; and he was able to give most of his time to the study of the natural history of the coast of Chili and Peru. One of the results of these shore expeditions was the finding such a stag-beetle as had never before been seen. It had peculiar, or colossal, nippers, and-I forget what “chiasos” means in Greek, but its jaws were chiasoi. It was brought home beautifully packed in a box of cotton; and, when the box was opened, excited the admiration of all beholders, and was called the “Chiasognathos Grantii.”¹

¹ [A “Description of Chiasognathus Grantii, a new Lucanideous Insect forming the type of an undescribed genus,” by J. F. Stephens, appeared with coloured illustrations in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1833, vol. 4, pp. 209-216. The mandibles are incurved at the tips so as to cross over each

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