Some publications of the Tract Society, called the _Weekly Visitor_, the _Child's Companion and Teacher's Offering,_ were taken in, and were much enjoyed by his son David, especially the papers of "Old Humphrey." Novels were not admitted into the house, in accordance with the feeling prevalent in religious circles.

Neil Livingstone had also a fear of books of science, deeming them unfriendly to Christianity; his son instinctively repudiated that feeling, though it was some time before the works of Thomas Dick, of Broughty-Ferry, enabled him to see clearly, what to him was of vital significance, that religion and science were not necessarily hostile, but rather friendly to each other.
The many-sidedness of his character showed itself early; for not content with reading, he used to scour the country, accompanied by his brothers, in search of botanical, geological, and zoological specimens.
Culpepper's _Herbal_ was a favorite book, and it set him to look in every direction for as many of the plants described in it as the countryside could supply.

A story has been circulated that on these occasions he did not always confine his researches in zoology to fossil animals.

That Livingstone was a poacher in the grosser sense of the term seems hardly credible, though with the Radical opinions which he held at the time it may readily be believed that he had no respect for the sanctity of game.

If a salmon came in his way while he was fishing for trout, he made no scruple of bagging it.