EDWARD FORBES 13 



Edward Forbes was born on the 12th of February, 1815, 

 at Douglas, where his father was a banker. Though settled 

 in the Isle of Man for several generations, the Forbes family- 

 was of Scottish descent, the great-grandfather, who was 

 involved in the Jacobite rising of 1745, having fled to the 

 island for refuge. The mother of Edward Forbes was Jane 

 Teare, heiress of the estates of Cor valla and Ballabeg at 

 Ballaugh, where her ancestors had lived for centuries, com- 

 bining, no doubt, in their blood both the Scandinavian and 

 the Celtic elements which are found in the Manx people. As 

 his paternal grandmother again was English, our naturalist, 

 though born and bred a Manxman, was of mixed blood, and 

 may have inherited qualities from all that is best in our 

 complex British nation. 



As seems frequently to be the case with naturalists, it was 

 from his mother that Forbes derived his love of nature, and 

 more particularly his early taste for botany. It was certainly 

 inborn in him, as we hear that at the early age of seven he had 

 already collected and arranged a museum of natural objects, 

 and had appointed a younger sister as assistant curator. 

 He was a delicate boy, unable to go to school till the age of 

 twelve, and it was, no doubt, to encourage these self-taught 

 home studies that his father built an addition to their house 

 to contain the boy's museum, and it was there that in his 

 early youth Forbes started those collections which, in later 

 life, formed the basis of his celebrated books on British 

 Echinoderms and British Mollusca. 



Home education in the case of a clever child probably 

 always favours precocity, introspection, and over-ambitious 

 attempts. Still, he must have been a remarkable boy to have 

 produced in his twelfth year a MS. work entitled A Manual 

 of British Natural History in all its Departments. He was, 

 we are told, a gentle and sweet-tempered child, and probably 

 his keenest interests were in the living things and wild nature 

 around him. He must have been very unlike most boys of 

 his age, and so was liable to be misunderstood and unappre- 



