308 Biograjphy ; — John Templeton^ Esq, 



intelligence of whatever changes in the weather we are to expect. When 

 the woodcock, fieldfare, and other winter birds of passage, appear un- 

 usually soon, and in uncommon numbers, we have every reason to expect 

 a severe winter; and when wildgeese and swans pass to the southward, we 

 know that the season, being severe, and the waters frozen northward, a 

 change of the wind towards that quarter will be accompanied by similar 

 weather. We should accordingly provide ourselves with shelter, food, and 

 suitable raiment J and the attentive gardener, protection for his tender 

 plants. But when the swift appears, let him turn out the inhabitants of his 

 green-house. By attention to insects, independently of receiving notice of 

 an approaching plenty or scarcity of fish, we may often guard against their 

 destructive effects. Thus may man, by the study of nature, gain new 

 powers, triumph over obstacles which present themselves on every side, and, 

 by means placed by the Deity within his reach, acquire foreknowledge." 



Such a report, continued, as it was, for many years, must afford valuable 

 data; and 1 cannot but think that the collection of them in a separate 

 publication, with such addition as his papers would supply, would be very 

 useful. In the introduction to the meteorological report, he notices what 

 has been done, and especially the tables compiled by our late estimable 

 countryman, Richard Kirwan, Esq., by which the temperature may be calcu- 

 lated for agricultural or horticultural purposes ; but observes, " that the 

 husbandman is yet at a loss to know what dependence should be placed on 

 the flitting clouds, whether his hay, when exposed to dry, will meet the 

 long wished-for sunshine." Hoping that at some future day a genius will 

 arise, who will arrange and give to the world a system which shall tend to 

 remove that uncertainty, " we will endeavour," he says, " to present a series 

 of well authenticated observations, which may assist him to complete so 

 desirable an undertaking." Mr. Templeton was admirably fitted for sup- 

 plying such articles as have been mentioned, because his eyes were always 

 open, and his observation ever keen. Nothing curious escaped his atten- 

 tion; and his journal, regularly kept and preserved from the year 1806 to 

 his last illness, contains a great variety of information, which would supply 

 an interesting work of the same nature as that of Mr. White of Sel- 

 borne, whom, in some respects, he much resembled. Ever ready to commu- 

 nicate what he knew, he supplied the late Mr. Wakefield with many anec- 

 dotes respecting the instinct of animals, and those cases in which they 

 appear to have powers superior to instinct, and there are probably many 

 others occurring in these books. In a cursory perusal of one of them, I 

 met one respecting a gander, which he observed searching for and raising 

 carrots. The gander removed the earth around the root with his bill, 

 which, on becoming clotted with earth, he shook until cleared; and when 

 he had bared the root sufficiently to get a firm hold of it with his bill, he 

 then, with sometimes considerable exertion, pulled it entirely out. I may 

 here, perhaps, recall to your notice some lines of my friend, the Rev. Dr. 

 Drummond, in his poem on the Giants* Causeway. Speaking of the instinct 

 which directs the eel and the salmon, he adds, — 



" Unfold it, then, O Templeton, whose view 

 Has roved creation's peopled regions through ; 

 Thou, who canst speak of all the flowers of spring, 

 Of fish of every fin, and birds of every wing ; 

 Tell, for thou know'st, how Nature has assigned 

 Their times and senses to each tribe and kind ; 

 And how her laws direct, propel, control. 

 So wondrous wise, th' instinctive power of soul. 



Mr. Templeton was not a great traveller, but he was well acquainted 

 with Ulster. During the time he spent with Lord Clanbrassil, at Bryaas- 



