340 MONTAGU'S CLOSE OBSERVATION. CHAP. xvi. 



then itbecame his study. He observed birds carefully ; 

 this was natural to him as a sportsman. He pub- 

 lished an Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds. 

 But his range of study broadened. The sea-shore 

 always presents a great attraction for Naturalists. 

 The sea is a wonderful nursery of nature. The 

 creatures that live in and upon it are so utterly 

 different from those which we meet with by land. 

 Then, everything connected with the ocean is full of 

 wonder. 



Colonel Montagu was an extraordinary obseiver. 

 He was a man who possessed the seeing eye. He 

 forgot nothing that he once clearly saw. He was 

 one of the best Naturalists, so far as logical acumen 

 and earnest research were concerned, that England 

 has ever seen. The late Professor Forbes said of him 

 that " had he been educated a physiologist, and made 

 the study of Nature his aim and not his amusement, 

 his would have been one of the greatest names in the 

 whole range of British science. There is no question 

 about the identity of any animal that Montagu de- 

 scribed. . . . He was a forward-looking philoso- 

 pher ; he spoke of every creature as if one exceeding 

 like it, and yet different from it, would be washed up 

 by the waves next tide. Consequently his descrip- 

 tions are permanent." We might also say of Edward, 

 that although comparatively uneducated, he possessed 

 precisely the same qualities of observing and seeing. 

 Nothing that once came under his eyes was forgotten. 



