296 Montagu’s Midge. [CHAP. XVI. 
ing that he once clearly saw. He was one of the best nat- 
uralists, so far as logical acumen and earnest research were 
concerned, that England has ever seen. The late Professor 
Forbes said of him that, “had he been educated a physiol- 
ogist, and made the study of nature his aim and not his 
amusement, his would have been one of the greatest. names 
in the whole range of British science. There is no ques- 
tion about the identity of any animal that Montagu de- 
scribed..... He was a forward-looking philosopher; he 
spoke of every creature as if one exceedingly like it, and yet 
different from it, would be washed up by the waves next 
tide. Consequently his descriptions are permanent.” We 
might also say of Edward, that, although comparatively un- 
educated, he possessed precisely the same qualities of ob- 
serving and seeing. Nothing that once came under his 
eyes was forgotten. He remembered, and could describe 
fluently and vividly, the form, habits, and habitats of the 
immense variety of animals that came under his observa- 
tion. 
Now, this Colonel Montagu had, in 1808, discovered on 
the shore of South Devonshire the same midge that Edward 
rediscovered in 1864 on the shore of the Moray Firth. 
Colonel Montagu had clearly and distinctly described the 
fish in the second volume of the “ Memoirs of the Werne- 
rian Natural History Society ;” but he had not given any 
figure of it. He named it the silvery gade (Gadus argen- 
teolus). The colonel passed away, and with him all further 
notice of his fish. It was never again observed until, fifty- 
six years later, it was rediscovered by Edward. Future 
writers on British fishes ignored it. They believed that 
Colonel Montagu had been mistaken, and had merely de- 
scribed the young of some species already known. Even 
Mr. Couch, the most accomplished ichthyologist of his time, 
had swept it out of his list of British fishes. But Montagu 
was too close an observer to be mistaken. As Professor 
Forbes had said of him, “There is no question about the 
