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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But Edward's scientific labors drew toward a close. He had 

 fought the fight of science on the one hand, and of poverty on the 

 other, until his constitution, strained by exposure and battered by 

 accidents, was no longer equal to the double struggle. In 1866 he 

 was elected an associate to the Linnsean Society, one of the highest 

 honors that science could confer upon him, and he. was shortly after 

 also made a member of the Societies of Natural History at both Aber- 

 deen and Glasgow. His biographer states that since then he has been 

 able to do comparatively little for the advancement of his favorite 

 study. 



In June, 1875, Edward remarked: "As a last and only remaining 

 source" (of subsistence), "I betook myself to my old and time-honored 

 friend, a friend of fifty years' standing, who has never yet forsaken 

 me, nor refused help to my body when weary, nor rest to my limbs 



"And here I am still." 



when tired my well-worn cobbler's stool. And here I am still on the 

 old boards, doing what little I can, with the aid of my well-worn kit, 

 to maintain myself and my family ; with the certainty that instead of 

 my getting the better of the lapstone and leather, they will very soon 

 get the better of me." 



It remains only to add that, since the publication of Mr. Smiles's 

 book, the queen has been moved to grant Thomas Edward a pension 

 of fifty pounds a year. All will be glad of this ; but we cannot forget 

 that if this man had directed his genius to the work of war, with a 

 tithe of the success he has achieved in enlarging our knowledge of 

 Nature, his reward would have been far greater than it is now ! 



