1 68 Country Rambles. 



some of those he came among! As for old Crozier, 

 whose name we have already mentioned two or three 

 times, and whose work was so largely identified with 

 White Moss, Boggart-hole dough, and Bamford-wood, 

 in temper and disposition he was Gibson's completest 

 antithesis. No man has ever done more, in his own 

 circle, to foster and diffuse the love of nature and of 

 natural science accomplishing this, as Crozier did, not 

 so much through the variety and exactitude of his know- 

 ledge, as through the urbanity of his manner. Few are 

 now living who remember Crozier; it may be allowed, 

 therefore, to repeat what we said of him in 1858, wishing 

 only that space would allow of an ample biography, 

 since, although not a life of stirring incident, it was one 

 of generous and unsophisticated good example. When 

 first acquainted with him, the year after the accession of 

 Her Majesty, he was curator of the Museum of Natural 

 History then possessed by the Mechanics' Institution, 

 and distinguished for his skill as a bird-stuffer, though 

 his occupation by day, and up to six p.m., was that of 

 a master saddler. The chief portion of that excellent 

 collection, long since unhappily sold off, had been accu- 

 mulated by the earliest of the Manchester Field Natural 

 History Societies a band of zealous, practical men who 

 had associated themselves, in 1829, for the furtherance of 

 botany, entomology, ornithology, and the allied sciences. 

 The register of names includes those of the celebrated 

 Edward Hobson, whose volumes of moss-books are con- 

 tained in our Free Libraries, of Rowland Detrosier, of all, 



