CHAP. I.] The Unruly Child. 29 
with houses, factories, and the Aberdeen Railway-station— 
its warehouses, sidings, and station rooms. A very fine 
bridge has been erected over the Green, now forming part 
of Union Street ; the Palace Hotel overlooking the railway- 
station and the surrounding buildings. 
Thomas Edward was brought up in his parents’ in 
the Green, such as it was sixty years ago. It is difficult to 
describe how he became a naturalist. He himself says he 
could never tell. Various influences determine the direc- 
"tion of a boy’s likings and dislikings. Boys who live in 
the country are usually fond of birds and birdnesting; just 
as girls who live at home are fond of dolls and doll-keep- 
ing. But this boy had more than the ordinary tendency 
to like living things; he wished to live among them. He 
made pets of them; and desired to have them constantly 
about him. 
From his birth he was difficult to manage. His mother 
said of him that he was the worst child she had ever nursed. 
He was never a moment at rest. His feet and legs seemed 
to be set on springs. When only about four months old, 
he leaped from his mother’s arms, in the vain endeavor to 
catch some flies buzzing in the window. She clutched him 
by his long clothes, and saved him from falling to the 
ground. He began to walk when he was scarce ten months 
old, and screamed when any one ventured to touch him. 
And thus he went on, observing and examining—as full of 
liking for living things as he was when he tried to grasp 
the flies in the window at Gosport. 
When afterward asked about the origin of his love for 
natural history, he said, “I suppose it must have origi- 
nated in the same internal impulse which prompted me to 
catch those flies in the window. This unseen something— 
this double being, or call it what you will—inherent in us 
all, whether used for good or evil, which stimulated the 
unconscious babe to get at, no doubt, the first living ani- 
mals he had ever seen, at length grew in the man into an 
