142 DAVIS: HUGH EDWIN STRICKLAND, F.R.S., ETC. 
the iiom de 'plume of Mrs. Markham. Whilst there he wrote to his 
mother: — " I have now accumulated sufhcient news to fill a letter. 
Mrs. Markham is deeply involved in the aftairs of France, which are 
to be cleared up and publicly declared in December. A rival work is 
advertised under the title of History of Spain, on the plan of Mrs. 
Markham's History of England. Several of the engravings from 
France have arrived. They are on wood, and are well executed. 
You ask me how I employ my time. I am usually employed in 
leai'ning Greek, etc., which my uncle is so good as to hear me say 
after dinner. Then in the middle of the day I either go to Lincoln 
with my uncle and aunt, both or neither, or I take a walk somewhere 
to potter after fossils. In the evening we generally read aloud to my 
great aunt Frances some of the Waverley Novels, or I read Parkinson's 
' Organic Remains ' to mj^self." At this time, as throughout the whole 
period of his life, Strickland was very industrious, and no branch of 
natural history appears to have come amiss. He was an indefatigable 
collector, and whether the objects lived in the air, gambolled in the 
water, or were preserved fossilized in the rocks, all seem to have come 
naturally under his supervision. In his diary of the 27th January, 
1827, he records that he "finished writing the list of British shells 
with their habitats, which I flatter myself is very complete, as it con- 
tains many new species with a vast number of habitats. This work 
has occupied me, with the exception of three months when I was in 
Lincolnshire, since last April, and has been almost entirely composed 
between the hours of six and nine in the morning." A few days later 
he despatched a letter to the Mechanics Magazine, signed Boreas," 
describing a plan he had invented for uniting a wind gauge to a 
weathercock, and exhibiting the results of both upon two dial plates. 
Other short articles followed, and in due course appeared in the 
journal. He collected and stufl^ed birds, and probably ^bout this time 
the strong attachment exhibited in after years to ornithological pur- 
suits was formed and fostered. The ordinary school-boy's studies, 
however, were not neglected, and the tuition of Mr. Arnold laid a 
solid basis of future knowledge. He thus describes the routine course 
whilst under the care of this gentleman: — "Mr. Arnold sits in his 
own room, and each of us in turn go in to say our lessons to him 
