386 
NATOTEE : 
4 
[August 27, 1885 
coast, river-shore, and hill-side, in the belfry at Ross, 
by Dean Gainsford’s grave—phenomena which others 
overlooked or passed as trivial were by him pounced upon 
and analysed and made to bear fruit in discovery and 
correlation and historical association and practical scien- 
tific use. Of human prodigies in every department he was 
the recognised Proxenus and patron. Miss Swann the 
giantess and her husband Captain Bates the giant, and 
the Two-headed Nightingale, and the Siamese Twins, 
and the New Zealand Chiefs, and Fatima, and Zariffa, 
and Julia Pastrana the hairy woman, and Benedetti the 
sword swallower, and the Wild Man of the Woods, and 
the man who could sing two notes at once, and the man 
who could drink a bottle of milk under water,—all looked 
up to him as a father, or sat as guests at his table. He 
came by degrees to be accepted as an Arbiter mon- 
Strorum,; as the necessary referee whenever any strange 
revelation or any novel puzzle presented itself in the 
world of nature. If a whale ran on shore at Gravesend, 
or a dolphin at Herne Bay; if an unusual sturgeon or 
tunny was consigned to a London fishmonger; if the 
lawyers at Nisi Prius were at issue whether a hole ina 
ship’s bottom could have been made by the beak of a 
swordfish, or the Gloucester Magistrates hesitated over 
the identity of elvers with young eels; if a sick porpoise 
arrived at the Zoological Gardens in a condition requiring 
brandy and water to be exhibited internally and caustic 
applied without ; if the Chief Rabbi felt searchings of 
heart as to whether oysters might for edible purposes be 
inserted in the Mosaic catalogue of things that creep ; if 
a sea-lioness were ill in the Aquarium, or a plague of 
frogs occurred at Windsor; if search were required for 
John Hunter’s coffin in St. Martin’s Church, or the 
skeleton of William Rufus had to be exhumed in 
Winchester Cathedral,—it was inevitable that Frank Buck- 
land should be telegraphed for first of all. And the influence 
he exerted was often highly beneficial. To his interference 
we owe the close time for seals and the Bill for the pre- 
servation of marine birds. A description in Land and 
Water of a neglected Museum at Canterbury shamed the 
Curator into setting it to rights; his good-humoured 
criticism, from a naturalist’s point of view, of the pictures 
in the Royal Academy, taught the artists beneficially that 
an eye as keen as Ruskin’s was noting their performances 
in a region beyond Ruskin’s reach. 
His home in Albany Street was one of the sights of 
London ; but to enter it presupposed iron nerves and a 
stomach like those of Horace’s reapers. Iron nerves— 
for, introduced at once to some five-and-twenty poor 
relations, exempt from shyness and deeply interested in 
your dress and person, to Jacko, and the Hag, and the 
Nigger, and Jenny, and Tiny, and the parrot and the 
Jaguar, and the laughing jackass, and Jemmy the suricate, 
and Dick the bear, and Arslan the Turkish wolf-dog, 
you felt, like Jaques in the play, as if another flood were 
toward, and the animals were parading for admission. 
Dura ilia—for the genius of experiment, supreme in all 
departments of the house, was nowhere so active as at 
the dinner-table. We read of panther chops, rhinoceros 
pie, bison steaks, kangaroo ham, horse’s tongue, elephant’s 
trunk ; of whale boiled with charcoal to refine the flavour ; 
of tripang and lump-fish; of stewed whelks and land- 
snails, roasted hedgehog, potted ostrich. We notice in 
the diary such entries as “seedy from lump-fish ;” “very 
poorly indeed, effects of horse;” and we sympathise 
with a departing guest who notes—“ tripe for dinner— 
don’t like crocodile for breakfast.” 
He was the Samson of science; the “Sunny One” 
amongst savants, as was Manoah’s son amongst 
judges ; roars of genial laughter accompany the heroism 
and the feats of both. But the comic recollections which 
surround him ought not to mask the serious admiration 
which is his due ;—first, as a public teacher, circulating 
popular science, generating field clubs and microscopical 
societies, preparing a public to appreciate and to support 
the more purely scientific labourer; secondly, as a 
material benefactor, raising in fifteen years the com- 
mercial value of English and Scottish salmon to the 
extent of 100,000/. per annum ; thirdly, as having in a 
manner rare, if not unique, passed behind the veil which 
hangs between us and the animal creation. He under- 
stood their gestures and expressions as we interpret those 
of one another, and they understood him in their turn ; 
the creatures at the Gardens, the beasts at Jamrach’s, the 
pets at home, seemed to know him in a human fashion ; 
his dying words—“ God is so good to thelittle fishes that 
I do not think He will let their inspector suffer shipwreck 
at the last ”—show his identity of feeling with them ; no 
one could talk to him long without a strangely new and 
reverential sense of brotherhood with these existences who 
were to him so entirely fraternal as people of his Father’s 
pasture and sheep of his Father’shand. Sciencehas had 
very many greater sons; none more simple, modest, 
blameless; none more genial, more humane, or more 
beloved. W. TUCKWELL 
COMPENSATION OF COMPASSES 
Practical Guide for Compensation of Compasses without 
Bearings. By Lieut. Collet, French Navy, Tutor in 
the Polytechnique School of France. Translated by 
W. Bottomley. With a Preface by Sir W. Thomson, 
F.R.S., &c. (Portsmouth: Griffin and Co., 1885.) 
HIS work appears in its English garb under the 
auspices of Sir W. Thomson. 
In the published instructions for the adjustment of his 
patent compass, Sir William Thomson gives short direc- 
tions for the use of the deflector, an instrument to faci- 
litate correcting that compass by magnets and soft iron 
when neither bearings of sun nor terrestrial objects can 
be obtained. With this deflector a fog is not the un- 
welcome visitor it generally is, for with the fog there is 
often a smooth sea, a condition favourable to a successful 
use of this delicate instrument. 
As an invention of Sir W. Thomson it is certain that 
the inquirer into the use of the deflector will at once be 
disposed to look for an instrument theoretically correct in 
conception and of great refinement in construction. The 
useful work of fully describing the practical applications 
and several uses of this instrument has, however, been left 
to an able writer on subjects connected with the compass 
in iron ships—Lieut. Collett, of the French Navy—and 
the book now under review is the result. 
It may be remarked that Sir W. Thomson, in the 
preface, fully recognises it as a complete and able exponent 
