NA TURE 



349 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1877 



A WORKING NATURALIST 



Life of a Scottish Naturalist : Thomas Edward, Asso- 

 ciate of the Linnean Society. By Samuel Smiles. 

 Portrait and Illustrations by George Reid, A.R.S.A. 

 (London : John Murray, 1876.) 



IT is rather a delicate thing and seldom advisable to 

 publish a full and formal biography of a man with 

 an account and attempted estimate of his work while he 

 himself is still alive and in comparative vigour. There 

 are many sound reasons, however, to justify Mr. Smiles 

 in telling the wonderful story of the still living Thomas 

 Edward, the Banff shoemaker and naturalist ; not the 

 least weighty of these is that it will bring to Edward 

 some of that kzidos and cash which he has earned long 

 ago, and which it would have been well for himself and 

 for science had they, or at least the latter, reached him 

 years since. 



Thomas Edward, born 18 14, is the son of very humble 

 but thoroughly respectable Scotch parent-;, who were able 

 to bestow upon him the scantiest schooling. He was 

 brought up in Aberdeen, where he was in rapid succession 

 exp^Usd from three schools on account of his intense in- 

 born passion for " everything that hath life." lie used to 

 take all sorts of birds and beasts and creeping things to 

 school with him, in his pockets, in boxes, or in bottles. 

 Tom's specimens would often escape, and the scene may 

 be imagined when some unconscious urchin realised that 

 a snail, or a horse-leech, or a "Maggie-mony-feet" (centi- 

 pede), was crawling up his bare legs. Poor Edward meant 

 no harm, but it was too much to expect that an ordinary 

 dame or dominie would, in that remote and unscientific 

 age, at least, take the trouble to understand the boy's 

 nature and tendencies and aspirations. The consequence 

 was severe thrashings and expulsion. 



When Edward left school finally he was only six years 

 old, could read with difficulty, and could hardly be said 

 to be able either to write or count. After serving for 

 some time in a mill he was apprenticed to a shoemaker 

 Begg, " a low-class Cockney," Mr. Smiles calls him, and 

 certainly a regular brute, who treated the poor boy and 

 his birds and beasts in a most cruel fashion. However 

 Edward managed with this man and a subsequent master 

 to pick up a fair knowledge of the shoemaking trade, and 

 after vainly trying to emigrate as a stowaway, removed to 

 Banff when about twenty years old, where he has lived 

 ever since working as a journeyman for wages, and 

 devoting every moment of his leisure to the gratification 

 of his passion for natural history. It is common enough 

 for working men, and especially for shoemakers, to take 

 an interest in certain animals, especially in birds ; but 

 Edward's fondness for animals was no fancy of this sort. 

 From almost his infancy he was devoured with a passion 

 for the observation and possession of animals of all kinds ; 

 to him no living creature was unclean or loathsome, and he 

 feared to face or handle nothing from a centipede or an 

 adder to a polecat. While yet a baby in his mother's 

 arms he nearly put a premature end to his career by 

 springing to clutch at a passing insect ; and while being 

 drilled as a militiaman in Aberdeen he made himself liable 

 Vol. XV.— No, 382 



to severe punishment by rushing like a madman from the 

 ranks in chase of a passing butterfly. . 



As a journeyman shoemaker Edward had to work from 

 six in the morning till nine at night. Shortly after settling 

 in Banff he married, luckily for his love of nature, a 

 prudent and considerate woman, who, instead of thwarting 

 his eccentricities, did what she could to help him and 

 enable him to indulge them. " Weel," she said once, 

 when asked what she thought of his habits, "he took 

 such an interest in beasts that I didna compleen. Shoe- 

 makers were then a very drucken set, but his beasts 

 keepit him frae them. My man's been a sober man all 

 his life ; and he never negleckit his wark. Sie I let him 

 be." " Wise woman ! " justly adds Mr. Smiles, Shoe- 

 makers' wages in Banff were very low — Only a few shillings 

 a week. For many years Edward earned only about \os. 

 a week, and yet on this he managed to rear, without in- 

 curring debt, a thoroughly respectable and honest family 

 of about a dozen children, who have repaid their parents' 

 care by doing what they could to comfort their old age. 

 Edward being a man who had a proper sense of his duty 

 to his family, seldom thought of allowing his favourite 

 pursuit to encroach on his long working hours. As his 

 consuming passion must be satisfied, he took the only 

 course legitimately open to him ; he gave up his nights 

 to it. As soon as he got home from work, unless indeed 

 the weather was unusually bad, he shouldered his gun, 

 equipped himself in his eight-pocket coat, four-pocket 

 vest, double-storied hat, and other traps of a rude but 

 efficient enough kind, and putting his supper of oatmeal 

 cakes in his pocket, set out to watch and catch the denizens 

 of the woods, heaths, air, and sea-shore of the region around 

 Banff. He would prowl about as long as the light permitted, 

 lie down for an hour or two in a hole, under the lee of a 

 bush, inside some old ruin, or underneath a flat tomb- 

 stone in some eerie churchyard, snatch an hour or two's 

 sleep, and be up again with the first streak of dawn. 

 Even when thus resting, however, he would frequently be 

 kept awake watching the doings of any night animals that 

 might be near him. Frequently also his rest was a very 

 broken one. He might be wakened by a weasel or a pair 

 of rats or some other inquisitive or hungry creature 

 tugging at his coat-pockets or trying to make their way 

 underneath his hat, always well filled with insects, birds, 

 or eggs. He gives a most exciting description of a two 

 hours' struggle with a pole-cat that attacked him while 

 resting in darkness in the ruins of Boyne Castle. He 

 was dreadfully lacerated by the claws of the animal, but 

 this he did not mind, so long as he succeeded in keeping 

 the skin of the pole-cat whole. Once he spent two days 

 and a night, without sleep or food, in watching a Little 

 Stint {Tringa viinuta), which he sighted on the shore 

 near Banff, and thought himself amply rewarded by being 

 able at last to capture it. As might be expected, in his 

 unconscious feagerness to follow out his pursuit, he met 

 with frequent accidents, and was once or twice within 

 very little of losing his life by falling down high precipices. 

 All this, however, he took as " in the bond " — as no more 

 than might be looked for by one in his circumstances 

 persisting in gratifying a passion of the kind that con- 

 sumed him. 



When compelled to stay at home Edward occupied 

 himself with the preparation of his collections and the 



S 



