When Boswell and Dr Johnson were guests at Sir Alexander Macdonald at Armadale on Skye on September 2, 1773, they were joined at dinner by "a little Aberdeenshire man, a naturalist, with his son, a dwarf with crooked legs. Jeans said that he had been at Mr Johnson's in London with Ferguson the astronomer. Mr Johnson thought it strange how he found somebody in such distant places who knew him; that he should have thought he might hide himself in Skye."2