94 GLAUCUS; OE, 



seen in a particular central seat in this section? 

 That, gentle reader, is perhaps one of the most in- 

 teresting men who attend the British Association. 

 He is only a private in the mounted guard (preven- 

 tive service) at an obscure j)art of the Cornwall 

 coast, with four shillings a-day, and a wife and nine 

 children, most of whose education he has himself to 

 conduct. He never tastes the luxuries wdiich are 

 so common in the middle ranks of life, and even 

 amongst a large portion of the working-classes. 

 He has to mend with his own hands every sort of 

 thing that can break or w^ear in his house. Yet 

 Mr. Peach is a votary of Natural History ; not a 

 student of the science in books, for he cannot afford 

 books ; but an investigator by sea and shore, a 

 collector of Zoophytes and Echinodermata — strange 

 creatures, many of which are as yet hardly known 

 to man. These he collects, preserves, and describes ; 

 and every year does he come up to the British 

 Association with a few novelties of this kind, accom- 

 panied by illustrative papers and drawings : thus, 

 under circumstances the very opposite of those of 



