32 Fondness for “Beasts.” [cHAP. I. 
When the family removed to Aberdeen, young Edward 
was in his glory. The foot of Rennie’s Wynd was close to 
the outside of the town. He was enabled to roam into the 
country by way of Deeside and Ferryhill. Close at hand 
were the Inches—not the Inches of to-day, but the beau- 
tiful green Inches of sixty years ago, covered with waving 
alge. There, too, grew the scurvy -grass, and the beauti- 
ful sea-daisy. Between the Inches were channels through 
which the tide flowed, with numerous pots or hollows. 
These were the places for bandies, eels, crabs, and worms. 
Above the Inches, the town’s manure was laid down, at a 
part now covered by the railway-station. The heaps were 
remarkably prolific in beetles, rats, sparrows, and numerous 
kinds of flies. Then the Denburn, at the foot of the Green, 
yielded no end of horse-leeches, powets (tadpoles), frogs, 
and other creatures that abound in fresh or muddy water. 
The boy used daily to play at these places, and brought 
-home with him his “venomous beasts,” as the neighbors 
called them. At first they consisted, for the most part, of 
tadpoles, beetles, snails, frogs, sticklebacks, and small green 
crabs (the young of the Carcinus manas); but as he grew 
older, he brought home horse-leeches, asks (newts), young 
rats—a nest of young rats was a glorious prize—field-mice 
and house - mice, hedgehogs, moles, birds, and bird’snests of 
various kinds. 
The fishes and birds were easily kept; but as there was 
no secure place for the puddocks, horse-leeches, rats, and 
such-like, they usually made their escape into the adjoining 
houses, where they were by no means welcome guests. The 
neighbors complained of the venomous creatures which the 
young naturalist was continually bringing home. The 
horse-leeches crawled up their legs and stuck to them, fetch- 
over. There was an old sweetheart of the quondam militia-man, whom 
he had deserted in favor of Margaret Mitchell. It was believed that 
she had maliciously lifted the child over the palings, and put him among 
the pigs, most probably from spite against her old lover. 
