lv PREFACE. 
evidence of early work in Natural History appears in a minute 
memorandum-book, inscribed in large capitals on the first 
page :—‘‘ Botany. E. Newman,” without date, but written 
in pencil; at so early an age that each letter is formed 
separately, and occasional pages are devoted to ‘ pothooks and 
hangers.” The following is an extract:—‘‘Of the geranium. 
The class is Monadelphia. The colour is various, being some- 
times white, in others scarlet; its leaf is round, but ragged; 
there are peppermint-scented and pencil-blossom. There are 
many other geraniums, but I do not know their names.’ Then 
follows a list of the Linnean divisions :—‘‘ Dodecandria, Icosan- 
dria, Polyandria (many), Didynamia (4), Tetradynamia (6),”’ &c. 
In the year 1812 he was sent to a boarding-school at Pains- 
wick, in Gloucestershire, of which Oade Roberts, a member of 
the Society of Friends, was master, where, in addition to being 
initiated into classical studies, his love for Natural History 
was developed. On ‘10th mo. 29, 18138,’’ he writes home to 
his mother :—‘‘I take great pleasure in botanizing, but there 
are not so many flowers as there were when I first came here to 
school; but still I find some. I shall have great pleasure in 
showing thee my botanical copy-books when I am at home.” 
This is written in a small neat hand, very different from that 
in the memorandum-book mentioned above. On ‘‘2nd month 
8rd, 1815,” he is still at Painswick, and writes to a relative :— 
*T could not give Helen much information with respect to 
lichens and mosses, as I have only yet studied the first classes ; 
but Iam now beginning to study the class Cryptogamia, though 
the snow has been on the ground ever since I returned.” One 
of his schoolfellows, a cousin, writes :—‘‘ We were both initiated 
into a love for Natural History, which continued to interest us 
in after years; in his case eminently so. * * * What particu- 
larly impressed itself on my mind was the neatness and accuracy 
of Edward's drawing of a beetle,—so superior to what any of the 
rest of us could accomplish.” 
On leaving school, in the year 1817, he went to Godalming, 
in Surrey,—his mother’s birthplace,—to which rural town his 
father, formerly in business in London as a manufacturer of 
morocco-leather, had removed on his retirement. The family 
house is just outside the town, at the corner of the lane 
