202 GILBERT WHITE AND OTHERS 



he might lose some subscribers, though he acknowledged 

 to me the other day he thought it would be generally 

 adopted before long.* 



Another very popular naturalist of a rather later 

 period than Gould was Mr. Frank Buckland. 



I am afraid I know of no one who could help you in 

 your Trout inquiries. I never had any taste for fishing 

 and have no piscatorial or ichthyological correspondents, 

 though I fully appreciate the interest of your observa- 

 tions. It is a pity that Day published them in such a 

 place as Lm^d and Water and gave that ignorant fellow 

 Frank Buckland the opportunity of introducing them. 

 By the way, I see from Saturday's No. that he has just 

 become aware of the existence of Bacteria — which he 

 calls " brutes ! " f 



The expression quoted in the letter above was less 

 than fair, for however little of a scientific man Buckland 

 may have been — and that was owing to his lack of a 

 scientific training — ^there have been few people during 

 the last fifty years who have done more than he did to 

 encourage the study of Natural History in this country. 

 He was always on friendly terms with Newton, who 

 wrote of him afterwards : '' . . . Buckland, for whom 

 personally I had nuich regard. His great mistake was 

 that he believed people when they told him he was a 

 naturalist, while he was wanting in every essential of a 

 naturalist, except zeal." 



Thomas Edwards, the " self-made " naturalist of 

 Banff, whose life was written by Smiles, corresponded 

 frequently in the 'forties and 'fifties with Newton, 

 who often spoke of him with affection. Mr. Harvie- 

 Brown proposed to put a portrait of Edwards with those 

 of others on the title-page of his " Fauna of the Moray 

 Basin." 



* Letter to Edward Newton, April 25, 1864. 

 t Letter to J. A. Harvie-Brown, May 10, 1880. 



