348 



CANADIAN LOCAL HISTOHY 



house, with a plens.ant little garden in front, on the left, a little way on, was occupied for a 

 while hy Mr. Joshua Beard, at the time Deputy Sheriff, but afterwards well known as owner of 

 extensive ironworks in the town. We then came opposite to the abode, on the same side, of 

 Charles FotliergHl, some time King's Printer for Upper Canada. He was a man of wide views 

 and great intelligence, fond of science, and an experienced naturalist. Several folio volumes 

 of closely written manuscript, on the birds and animals generally of this continent, by him, 

 must exist somev.-here at this moment. They were transmitted to friends in England, as we 

 have understood. We remember seeing in a work by Bewick a horned owl of this country, 

 beautifully ligured, which, as stated in the context, had been drawn from a stuffed specimen 

 supplied by Mr. Fothergill. He himself was a skillful delineator of the living creatures that 

 so much interested him. In 1832, Mr. Fothergill sat in Parliament as member for Northum- 

 berland, and for expressing some independent opinions in that capacity, he was deprived of 

 the office of King's Printer. He originated the law which established Agricultural Societies in 

 Upper Canada. In I806, he appears to have been visited in Pickering by Dr. Thomas Rolph, 

 when making notes for his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada." "The Township of Pick- 

 ering," Dr. Rolph says, "is well settled and contains some flue land, and weU watered. Mr. 

 Fothergill," he continues, "has an extensive and most valuable museum of natural curiosities 

 at his residence in this township, which he has coUected with great industry and the most 

 refined taste. He is a person of superior acquirements, and ardently devoted to the pursuit 

 of natural philosophy." P. 189. It was Mr. Fothergill's misfortune to have lived too early in 

 Upper Canada. Many plans of his in the interests of literature and science came to nothing 

 for the want of a sufficient body of seconders. In conjunction with Dr. Dunlop and Dr. Rees, 

 it Was the intention of Mr. Fothergill to establish at York a Museum of Natural and Civil 

 History, with a Botanical aiid Zoological Garden attached ; and a grant of land on the Govern- 

 ment Reserve between the Garrison and Parr's Brewery was actually secured as a site for the 

 buildings and grounds of the proposed institution. A prospectus now before us sets forth in 

 detail a very comproliensive scheme for this Museum, or Lyceum, which embraced also a picture 

 gallery, "for subjects connected with Science and Portraits of individuals," and did not omit 

 "Indian antiquities, arms, dresses, utensils, and whatever might illustrate and make permanent 

 all that we can know of the Aborigines of this great Continent, a people who are rapidly passing 

 , away and becoming as though they had never been." For several years Mr. Fothergill pub- 

 lished "The Tork Almanac and Royal Calendar," which gradually became a volume of between 

 four and five hundred duodecimo pages, flUed with practical and official information on the 

 subject of Canada and the other British American Colonies. This work is stiU often resorted 

 to. Hanging in his study we remember noticing a large engraved map of " Cabotia." It was 

 ,; a delineation of the British Possessions in North America — ^the present Dominion of Canada, 

 in fact. It had been his purpose in 1823 to' ptiblish a " Canadian Annual Register ;" but this 

 ; he never accomplished. While printing the Upper Canada Gazette, he edited in conjunction 

 with that periodical and on the same sheet, the "Weekly Register," bearing the motto, "Our 

 ■- endeavor will be to staihp the very body of the time — ^its form and pressure : we shall extenuate 

 , nothing, nor shall we set down aught in malice." Prom this publication may be gathered 

 much of the current history of the period. In it are given many curious scientific excerpts 

 , from his Common Place Book. At a later period he published, at Toronto, a weeldy paper in 

 . quarto shape, named "The Palladium." Among the non-offlcial advertisements in the Upper 



■ Canada Gazette, in the year 1823, we observe one signed " Charles Fothergill," oflferuig a reward 



■ "even to the full value of the volumes," for the recovery of missing portions of several English 

 standard works which had belonged formerly, the advertisement states, to the "Toronto 

 Library," broken up "by the Americans at the taking of York." It was suggested that 

 probably tlie missing books were stiU scattered about, up and down, in the town. It is odd to 

 see the name of "Toronto" cropping out in 1823, in connection with a library. (In a much 



. earlier York paper we notice the " Toronto Coffee House" advertised). Mr. Fothergill belonged 

 to the distinguished Quaker family of that name in Yorkshire. A rather good idea of his 



■ character of countenance may be derived from the portrait of Dr. Arnold, prefixed to Stanley's 

 Meihoir. An oil painting of him exists, but it has been sent to relatives in England. We 

 observe in Leigh, Hunt's London Journal, 1. 172, a reference to ' ' FothergiU's Essay on the Philoso- 



/ phy, Study and.Use of Natural History." If not by our Caaadiaii Fothergill, it was probably 



