NOTES AND QUERIES. 239 
which he made of his time may be judged from the result of these excur- 
sions. His accumulation of natural objects became something extraordinary. 
Tn eight years he had preserved nearly 2000 specimens of living creatures 
collected in the neighbourhood of Banff—quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, 
crustacea, corals, sponges, and other objects, to say nothing of a large 
collection of carefully dried plants, the whole of which he learnt to mount 
and preserve himself. It is lamentable to think that these collections were 
subsequently lost when, quitting Banff for Aberdeen in the hope of bettering 
his position, Edward opened a museum, which did not pay its expenses, 
and the collections had to be sold at a great sacrifice, the greater portion 
subsequently perishing for want of proper care. But although the collection 
had gone, the knowledge gained in forming it had been well stored, and 
through the kindness of his friend the Rey. Mr. Smith, of Monquhitter, 
Edward was enabled to impart much useful information to other naturalists. 
In Bate and Westwood’s ‘ History of British Sessile-eyed Crustacea,’ his 
services are frequently acknowledged. Of the Crustacea mentioned in that 
work Edward collected no less than 127 species in the Moray Firth, of 
which twenty were new to Science. Many of his beetles and other insects 
were forwarded for identification to Edward N ewman, who named them for 
him, and assisted him liberally with books that were likely to be useful to 
him. The late Mr. Couch, in the preparation of his work on ‘British 
Fishes,’ found Edward a most useful correspondent, for through his agency 
several species of fish were procured on the Banffshire coast which were 
not previously known to occur there. Just ten years ago Mr. Smiles 
published his life of this Scotch Naturalist, a work which was reviewed at 
the time in these pages (Zool. 1877, pp. 71—76), and which doubtless 
everyone with a taste for Natural History has read. It was gratifying to 
learn that the publication of his biography placed Edward in receipt of a 
royal pension of £50 per annum, and led to a public recognition of his 
genius by the presentation to him at Aberdeen of a purse containing £338. 
But he himself must surely have felt how much more useful would this 
have been had it come to him in the prime of life instead of in his old age. 
A Median Eye in Vertebrates.—A most interesting discovery has 
been made of a kind totally unexpected, and of fundamental importance. 
Dr. von Graaf, having reported the presence of an eye-like organ in the 
Slowworm (Anguis fragilis), Mr. W. Baldwin Spencer, M.A. (Assistant to 
Professor Moseley at Oxford, and lately elected to a fellowship at Lincoln 
College, Oxford), has examined a similar structure in Hatteria, and some 
other Lizards. He has discovered the nerve by means of which the 
median interparietal eye is connected with the brain, and finds that it is a 
portion of the epiphysis cerebri (pineal gland). The eye does not reach the 
surface, is surrounded with connective-tissue, has a distinct lens, and is 
