MALCOLM LAING W. B. DANIEL. 145 



M. P. ; the historian and the political and literary 

 associate of Mr. Charles Fox. Malcolm Laing, whose 

 memory will ever be dear to the author, was a man of 

 the most benevolent, placid, and considerate character, 

 who ruined his health and shortened his existence by 

 a continued intense application to those laborious and 

 time-consuming researches which so few have the 

 ardour, resolution, and perseverance to engage in. 



Nearly at the same period (1833), died the Rev. 

 "William Barker Daniel, author of " Rural Sports," a 

 work of great merit and equal celebrity, and which, 

 both as a useful and ornamental book, will reach pos- 

 terity, more especially in the libraries of those inter- 

 ested in the subject. Daniel was an Essex man, a 

 countryman and townsman of the present writer, who, 

 from early youth, well knew him and his family. He 

 was a nephew of Lady Barker, the reputed chere 

 amie of the Culloden Duke of Cumberland. The de- 

 ceased had originally a sufficient estate, and resided in 

 his native county, until either imprudence or misfor- 

 tune located and fixed him in banco Regis for the re- 

 mainder of his life, a term extending, as I recollect, to 

 about forty years. His age was probably given some- 

 what incorrectly in the newspapers : I think it must 

 have extended several years beyond fourscore. 



My acknowledgments for a variety of information 

 are due to Mr. Herring, of the Menagerie, New Road. 

 His establishment is of the first character and extent 

 for poultry of all kinds, land or aquatic, whether do- 

 mestic or foreign ; pigeons, parrots, singing-birds, 

 deer, dogs ; in short, for every species of useful or 

 curious and ornamental stock, necessarily the objects 



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