MR. JAMES WM. BOULT. 237 



the stranger new to a district, and of briefer sojourn in it, 

 being often the first to appreciate and describe its natural 

 resources. The reason for this is quite explicable. The 

 denizen from a distance naturally is not hampered by local 

 prejudice and tradition, or the long familiarity that breeds 

 contempt. But worthy of higher commendation is the man, 

 who, though resident in his native fields, cannot be charged 

 with either of these failings, and that is the case with the 

 subject of this sketch. Notwithstanding long residence and 

 work in the busy town, he never misses an opportunity of 

 •rambling, often more than once a week, into the adjacent 

 country, and no one has made the eastern portion of the 

 Riding more thoroughly his own in many different branches 

 of natural history, as the sequel is intended to show. 



North Frodingham would scarcely ever know, perhaps 

 does not yet know, what an interesting little visitor came 

 amongst them that wild March month some fifty-eight years 

 ago, for when only a very few weeks old, the child was 

 carried in his mother's arms to Newcastle, where Boult the 

 elder was to be employed for some months. Thence they 

 returned to Yorkshire, and alternately Driffield and Hull, for 

 the periods of James William's childhood and boyhood, became 

 the places of abode. 



At Driffield the child got the first rudiments of an educa- 

 cation which, much to his present regret, never advanced 

 very far. He remembers first attending a school kept by a 

 Mr. Morris in Eastgate, and then the National school, Cross- 

 hill. In these he learnt to read and write fairly well, but 

 has painful recollections to this day of struggling with the 

 elements of arithmetic. Possibly schools were then, as to 

 some extent they still too often are, rather dreary and unlov- 

 able places, and the study of nature or human nature did not 

 receive much attention. Consequently the fields and lanes, 

 the wolds, and the rushing trout streams that join to make 

 the river Hull, constituted a more attractive academy wherein 

 some of the boy's earliest and best lessons were learnt. His 

 first glimpses of local wild life were obtained rambling with 

 a schoolmate who gathered snails with which to feed captive 

 blackbirds and thrushes. 



In his ninth or tenth year the family came to Hull, where 

 he also made the acquaintance of the then existing schools 

 of the ante-school-board times. But the experience was little 

 better than that of Driffield. One gleam of brighter nature 

 shone in a seminary in so remarkable a place as Robinson 

 Row. Here the master was a bird-fancier and his school- 



