LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



IN the year 1837, Waterton prefixed to his first series of Essays in 

 Natural History an account of such of his travels and adventures as 

 are not mentioned in the " Wanderings in South America," and he 

 continued the narrative up to the year 1857 in the second and third 

 series of Essays. The larger part of this autobiography is incor- 

 porated in the present Memoir. Waterton's sketch, like the man, 

 was unpretentious. He makes no boast, claims no discoveries, and 

 demands no supremacy, but gives a simple chronicle of the^-interest- 

 ing events of his life. My object in my additions is threefold: to 

 complete the story of his career ; to describe the attainments and 

 work of a naturalist, the first of his own time, and in no age sur- 

 passed j and, lastly, to . preserve some of the traits of a character so 

 rare and beautiful, that to allow the memory of it to drop unrecorded 

 into the past would be to rob the world of a precedent which it can- 

 not afford to lose. 



" Such a man 



Might be a copy to these younger times, 

 Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now 

 But goers backward."* 



Charles, the eldest son of Thomas and Anne Waterton, was borr 

 in 1782. To avoid, perhaps, the notice which the anniversary would 

 have occasioned, Waterton would never tell the day of his birth, 

 though his friends knew that it was near the beginning of summer 

 In the year 1864 he asked his sisters-in-law, Miss Edmonstone and 

 Miss Helen Edmonstone, to come and see a stone cross which he 



* " All's Well that Ends Well," Act i., sc. 2. 



A 



