Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/122

114 and gorse on the heath-clad links,. . . having neither dolls nor playmates." "When the tide was out," she says in her "Personal Recollections," "I spent hours on the sand, looking at the star-fish and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for sand-eels, cockles, and the spouting razor-fish. I made a collection of shells, such as were cast ashore, some so small that they appeared like white specks in patches of black sand. There was a small pier on the sands for shipping limestone brought from the coal-mines inland. I was astonished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with beautiful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large pieces, and brought them to my repository. I knew the eggs of many birds, and made a collection of them."

When ten years old, she was sent to school at Musselburgh, where she spent a year of misery. The chief thing she had to do at this expensive establishment was to learn by heart a page of Johnson's dictionary, not only to spell the words, give their parts of speech and meaning, but as an exercise of memory to remember their order of succession. Besides this, she had to learn the first principles of writing, and the rudiments of French and English grammar. From this place "she returned home, as she naïvely says, like a wild animal escaped from a cage, to revel once more in the curiosities of the sea-shore, sitting up half the night to watch the stars or the aurora, and having an instinctive horror, which clung to her through life, of being alone in the dark." Four or five years later she received her first introduction to mathematics, by one of the most curious accidents that could be imagined—through a fashion-magazine. At one of the tea-parties given by her mother's neighbors, she became acquainted with a Miss Ogilvie, who asked her to go and see fancy works she was engaged upon. "I went next day," Mrs. Somerville writes, "and after admiring her work, and being told how it was done, she showed me a monthly magazine with colored plates of ladies' dresses, charades, and puzzles. At the end of a page I read what appeared to me to be simply an arithmetical question; but in turning the page I was surprised to see strange-looking lines mixed with letters, chiefly X's and Y's, and asked, 'What is that?' 'Oh,' said Miss Ogilvie, 'it is a kind of arithmetic—they call it algebra; but I can tell you nothing about it.' And we talked about other things; but, on going home, I thought I would look if any of our books could tell me what was meant by algebra. In Robertson's 'Navigation,' I flattered myself that I had got precisely what I wanted; but I soon found that I was mistaken. I perceived, however, that astronomy did not consist in star-gazing, and, as I persevered in studying the book for a time, I certainly got a dim view of several subjects which were useful to me afterward. Unfortunately, not one of our acquaintances or relations knew anything of science or natural history; nor, had they done so,