BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOMAS EDWARD. 595 



the French Academy; but Thomas Edward Tom Edward who 

 is he ? and what business has his portrait in The Popular Science 

 Monthly, where we expect to tind likenesses of only eminent scien- 

 tific men ? " 



Well, the Thomas Edward whom we represent is in his proper 

 place; and, if he has not been heard of before, he ought to have been. 

 He was certainly not a King of England, but he has been a king and 

 a hero in his own way ; and we are glad to note that the Queen of 

 England and Empress of India has recently honored herself by hon 

 oring him. Nor has Thomas Edward, like the great Jonathan, ever 

 written on the will; but he is one of Nature's illustrations of it, 

 and is himself a living treatise on the force of the will. And, although 

 he is not a rich Anglo-French naturalist, the pet of the Academy, and 

 applauded through Europe, he is nevertheless an eminent naturalist, 

 who in an obscure Scotch town, without education, without means, 

 without books, without encouragement, and without the acquaintance 

 of men of science a poor, day-laboring mechanic, with a large fam- 

 ily has done original work in science, of a quality and extent that 

 would have carried half a dozen common men into the American 

 Academy of Sciences, or the Royal Society of England. Thomas Ed- 

 ward fought his way alone, inspired and sustained by a love of Na- 

 ture which with him was nothing less than an ungovernable passion ; 

 and, although working in long obscurity and bitter privation, and under 

 difficulties that would have crushed the spirit of ordinary men, he has 

 at length met the reward he so richly deserves, by falling into the 

 hands of a gifted and admiring biographer. Well can he have waited, 

 and much can he have suffered, who secures the genius of Mr. Smiles 

 to w T rite his life while he is yet living, the skillful pencil of Reid to 

 illustrate it, the aristocratic house of Murray to publish it in his 

 native country, and the enterprise of the Harpers to reprint it in 

 the United States. We make free use of Mr. Smiles's work ' in the 

 following pages. 



Thomas Edward was the son of a hand-loom weaver, and was 

 born near Aberdeen, in Scotland, in 1814. From his birth he was dif- 

 ficult to manage. His mother said of him that he was the worst child 

 she had ever nursed. He was never a moment at rest, his feet and 

 legs seemed to be set on springs. In babyhood he showed an impulse 

 to leap from his mother's arms after flies. As soon as he began to 

 walk he made friends with the cats and doo;s, and would toddle out 

 into the streets to cultivate the acquaintance of the hens, ducks, and 

 geese, and would watch the pigs in a pen for hours. As he grew 

 older he became a desperate rambler and runaway, and developed a 



1 " Life of a Scotch Naturalist : Thomas Edward, Associate of the Linnrean Society." 

 By Samuel Smiles, author of "Lives of the Engineers/' "Self-Help," "Character," 

 "Thrift," etc. Portrait and Illustrations by George Reid, A. R. S. A. Harper & 

 Brothers. 



