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Linnaius and the Furze-bushes. See j 1 .

Eminent Naturalists.

"BT

THOMAS GEEEyVOOD, RBjGLS.,

AUTHOR OF

" A Tour in the States and Canada," "Free Public Libraries,"

"Half Hour Papers. " etc,

-

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, &

COL,

STATIONERS' HALL COURT, E.C.

1886.

P E E F A 0 E.

The age in which we live necessitates brevity, and
average readers have not time for the perusal of volu-
minous biographies. It appeared to the author that
there was a need of short yet comprehensive sketches of
some leading naturalists, and he has attempted to supply
that want. His desire has been throughout to stimulate
a desire, particularly in the minds of the young, for
Natural Science. Elementary lessons in Botany, Greology,
and other subjects of a similar nature are now given in
many Board and voluntary schools, and the author
will be glad if this little book reaches the hands of
some of these young students. He has endeavoured to
interest the reader in the lives of a few of the men of
light and leading in the study of nature.

London, January, 1886.

CONTENTS,

-♦<>♦-

PAGE

Sir Charles Lixnjeus ... 1

Sir John Lubbock ...... -34

Thomas Edward 46

Louis John Rudolph Agassiz . 94

Cuvier ....-•• H(^

Buffos 140

Sir Charles Lyell, Bart 100

Sir Roderick J. Murchison . 183

EMINENT NATURALISTS

SIR CHARLES LINN/EUS.

he subject of this sketch was born
on May 3rd, 1707. His father was
pastor of the little village of Bashult,
in the province of Smaland, Sweden.
The family surname is supposed to
have originated from a lofty linden-
tree which stood in the native place
of their ancestors.

Charles was the first-born of the
family, and, like many other men
who have made the world famous, it was intended that
he should follow the same calling as his father, and
though the pidpit of that day may have lost an earnest
and zealous teacher, botanical science has been the
gainer, and in many ways it may be said that he
has exerted a wider and more beneficial influence by
the calling which he eventually followed than he could
possibly have done as a village pastor.

1 i?

2 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

His father, Nicholas Linnaeus, was passionately fond
of gardening, and living as he did in the heart of a
beautifnl country, in a house surrounded by ample
grounds, he was enabled to gratify this hobby to his
heart's content, and young Charles appears to have
been born with this intense love for the same pursuit,
and thus his parents themselves laid the foundation
of what was afterwards to defeat their most cherished
wishes, that he should enter the ministry. As a babe
cooing in his wooden cot he was often carried into
the open air amid the trees and flowers, and the
lullabies of his mother were supplemented by the
lullabies of the birds and the rustling leaves. His
earliest attempts to walk were among the flower-beds,
and his fingers daily revealed the handfuls of soil
which he had been displacing. Even his very toys
were flowers, and thus in the midst of such surround-
ings there could be no wonder that he should grow
up a veritable child of nature.

A change of pastorate in 1708 took the family to
another living, and here the father selected a house
with a very large garden, which he soon cultivated
to such an extent as to make it the finest and most
variegated in the entire district. He had at one
time in it upwards of four hundred species of flowers,
many of them of foreign growth. Young Charles
very soon made himself familiar with the names of
the plants and flowers growing around their home,
and almost as soon as he had found the use of his
little legs he went out on private expeditions and
brought home roots of weeds and wild herbs among

SIR CHARLES LINNiEUS. . 6

other things, and these he himself planted in the
garden, giving his father great trouble to get rid of
them afterwards. The boy, however, soon began to
distinguish what he could bring home and plant with
safety, and what he could not.

The time soon came when Charles was to attend
his first school, and to Wexico, a neighbouring town,
he was sent in 1717. His father had given him a
good elementary education, and of Latin the boy's
head had just about as much as he could well carry
at that time ; but, chief of all, his love for his
favourite pursuit went with him, and it was
fortunate that the rector of the school was also
fond of botany, and soon took an additional interest
in Charles when he discovered that he possessed
extraordinary talents in quoting the names and
j^eculiarities of plants and flowers which grew about
the school. The majority of the school-companions
of Linnaeus were far ahead of him in the ordinary
studies which they passed through, and looked upon
Charles in the light of a truant in his self-imposed
excursions after plants at the expense of Hebrew and
the other subjects of the school course. So negligent
did the boy become of these subjects, that the tutors,
after many admonitions, considered it necessary to
complain to his father, and this so disturbed the
senior in his mind that Charles was severely repri-
manded. He promised to pay all the attention which
he could to divinity, but had to confess to his father
that he possessed no inclination whatever for the
sacred pursuit which he so eagerly desired him to

4 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

follow. The hopes of the father received a severe
blow at this, and without delay Charles was appren-
ticed to a shoemaker.

How many examples are afforded from the lives
of men whose parents have been unable to understand
the bent of the son's mind have placed them in trades
directly opposed to that for which they had the most
liking ! Luther was meant to be a lawyer, and became
the greatest reformer which the world has known.
Tycho Brahe was to have been a politician, and
became an astronomer. Shakespeare was to have
measured yards of cloth behind a draper's counter,
and became the greatest play-writer of any age.
Carlyle was intended for a parson, and became a
philosopher; and so other instances might be quoted.
No blame could be attached to the father of Linnaeus
for this decision. He naturally argued with himself,
How could the boy make a living out of plants ? and
so, as he had no taste for theology, an honest calling,
which would eventually be a livelihood for him, was
selected. But there was to be one of many examples
where "man proposes and Grocl disposes," and young-
Charles' guardian angel was to be a physician in
"Wexico, who was professor of medicine in the college
where Charles attended. This physician, John Eoth-
mann by name, appealed eloquently to the father not
to remove his son from college, but to let him study
botany and physic ; and to these entreaties he added
an offer, which shows how fully he believed in the
views he held concerning young Linnaeus, and what
large-heart edness he possessed. He generously recom-

SIR CHARLES LINNAEUS. 5

mended that Charles should make one of his house-
hold during the remainder of the term for which he
had been sent to Wexico, and with a suggestion such
as this, the mother, who had a kindly and sympathetic
nature, and the father, after a hard struggle, gave up
their darling wish to see their son in a pulpit ; and
so Charles entered the house of Rothmann to study
a little physic and a good deal of botany. Noble
John Eothmann deserves to be remembered for his
part of this transaction, and naturalists especially owe
him a debt of gratitude.

The library of Rothmann contained some rare books
on botany, and these became the eager study of the
youth. He attended the school for three years, and
then in his twentieth year prepared himself to go to
the University of Lund in 1727. It was intended that
he should reside in the house of a relative during his
studies at Lund ; but almost before he had arrived there
he was informed of the death of his kinsman. He,
however, entered the class of Professor Stobceus, the
lecturer on physic and botany, and by means of the
discourses of this tutor the botanical knowledge of
Linnaeus soon began to assume a definite form. The
principles of the science became fixed in his mind.
Stobceus noticed his diligence, and followed the good
example of Rothmann, and took him into his own
house. It was here that he first met with a well-
arranged collection of natural history, and became
acquainted with curiosities which lie had never seen
before. He at once began collecting a herbal for
himself, and made many journeys into the neigh-

6 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

bouring districts for the purpose of enriching his
collection. During one of these excursions he nearly
became a victim to his own curiosity. While cutting
a plant he was stung by a venomous worm. He was
some distance from home, and his hand and arm began
to swell visibly before his eyes. He at length reached
the house of Stobceus, and there he kept his bed for
some time, all hopes of his recovery having been given
up. The skill of Stobceus, and the good nursing which
he received in the professor's household, eventually
saved him. This adventure, rather than deterring
him from further collecting, only served to deepen
his curiosity to become acquainted with some of the
inferior classes of nature.

To the great regret of Stobceus, he decided to leave
Lund for the University of Upsala, which was con-
sidered the better college of the two. His father could
allow him only £8 a year towards his expenses. Under
this small allowance, and with a young and increasing
familv, it was the most that could be done. No wonder
that the pangs of hunger should be no uncommon occur-
rence to this studious youth. His shoes — and he was
very hard on shoe-leather — were constantly in holes,
and these he endeavoured, as well as he could, to stop
up with paper. The cast-off clothes of the other
students were the best covering which he could obtain.
Sheer poverty stared him in the face, and a less
determined youth would have given up his favourite
studies in despair. This was one of the most dis-
tressing periods of his life, but he struggled manfully
through it. Celsius, the professor of divinity at Upsala,

SIR CHARLES LINNJEUS. 7

and himself a botanist of no mean order, discovered
Linnaeus one day in the gardens surrounding the
college, intently examining a plant, and on entering
into conversation with him he was astonished at the
extent of the botanical knowledge which Linnaeus
displayed. This was the first of many conversations
with him, and these eventually led to Celsius, where,
for the literary assistance which he woidd be able to
render his benefactor, he was to receive board and
lodging free. The professor was engaged on an
elaborate work on the plants and trees mentioned in
the Bible, and it was in the compiling of this that
he was to help. Celsius treated him with great
paternal care and gave Linnaeus free access to the
extensive library which he possessed. Among the
quiet of the books of Celsius and Rudbeck, another
professor, Linnaeus first conceived those schemes of
classification, by which he was to revolutionise
botanical science. He set to work to consider the
plants, especially from their new and unimproved
side, by their sexes, by the number of stamina, and
compared them with the ancient system, and the
divisions which had till then been used. As he
progressed with his studies the more deficient did he
find the ancient system. The sexes of plants now
occupied his thoughts night and day, and the fresh
knowledge which he obtained by these studies soon
paved his way to better fortune.

The steps taken in Sweden at this time for the
furtherance of botanical science deserve never to be
forgotten. Professor Rudbeck travelled at the expense

8 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

of Queen Christina, for the purpose of collecting
herbs and plants. He was a man of deep learning,
and with considerable boldness gave utterance to
principles which tended to completely upset some of
the theories generally accepted up to that period. He
was author of several valuable works, and his death
was said to have been accelerated by the destruction by
fire of work on which he had been engaged for some
years.

Olaus Eudbeck succeeded his father as professor
at Upsala, and as he greatly needed assistance in the
botanical lectures, his choice for this work fell on
Linnaeus, for whom he had acquired a great liking.
At this time Linnaeus was twenty-three ; but the
vivacity of his instruction and the novelty of his
matter charmed his audience, and he rapidly rose in
favour in the college. His new plan of botanical
reform took hold of him ; but he very soon became
acquainted with the difficulties and trouble which
would attend the introduction of a new botanical
system; but the prospects of honour and fame
increased his zeal and impelled him to go forward.

A society had existed for some years in Upsala
which had received royal sanction and assistance.
The object of this society was to extend the know-
ledge of domestic natural history. The elder
Rudbeck already named had some years previously
undertaken a journey to Lapland to collect specimens
of the flora and fauna of that country, at the expense
of King Charles XI., but his collection had been
destroyed in the great fire at Upsala in 1702. In

Linnaeus.

SIR CHARLES LINN^US. 11

1731 the academy came to the decision to send ont
another traveller to make discoveries in that wild
region; and the choice fell on Linnaeus for this
purpose.

On the 17th of May, 1732, he started on this journey
to Lapland, with a very small allowance for travelling-
expenses, and without any promise of ultimate
reward from the society ; indeed, the whole sum which
the academy devoted to this perilous and uncomfort-
able journey did not amount to ten pounds.

The only reliable biographer of Linnaeus is Dr.
Stoever, whose book was published in the Swedish
language about the year 1785, and an English
translation of which, published in 1794, says of
this journey : —

Under these unencouraging circumstances he
started alone, sometimes on horseback, and sometimes
on foot, for Lapland. He was persuaded at various
places to wait for milder weather, but being impatient
of this, he resolutely pursued his journey. Trees,
herbs, animals, mountains, and almost every curiosity of
nature which offered itself, became the objects of his
observation and attention. Difficulties and hardships
surrounded him. Rivers over which he had to pass
were often swollen and had rapid torrents, and so his
life was often in danger. Bogs, forests, lack of
provisions did not stop him, and often lie had to
content himself with a bed such as he could make
of twigs and leaves. Fortunate did lie consider
himself if, after the hard and trying work of the
day, he could discover the hut of some Laplander

12 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

where he could obtain food and rest for the night.
It is said that, at the time of this journey through
the various provinces of Lapland, it did not contain a
single town, and only thirty-two scattered villages,
some of which were only very small. It can be
easily gathered how perilous and lonely this
journey must have been. Linnseus said of this
journey some years afterwards: — "My journey
through. Lapland was particularly toilsome : and I
own that I was obliged to sustain more hardships
and dangers in the sole peregrination through the
frontier of our northern world, than in all the
travels which I undertook in other parts, though
not without fatigue and weariness. But having
once sustained the toils of travelling, I buried in the
oblivion of Lethe all the dangers and difficulties
which I had suffered. The invaluable fruits which
I reaped from these excursions compensated for
every toil."

He travelled during this journey about 4,000
miles, and brought back upwards of a hundred plants
before unknown or undescribed ; but, as before stated,
his attention was not wholly absorbed with the
plant"' region. He noticed the curiosities of the
animal region, the domestic arrangements and
customs of the inhabitants, and many other things
which came in his way, making as he went along
lengthy notes in his diary, and which were after-
wards elaborated and published by him in 1748.
In this he described the plants, not by their
flower or blossom, but by his own plan of sex,

SIR CHARLES LINNiEUS. 13

number of stamina or dust-threads, and the pistilla
or dustways. From this work his system first dated.

The Royal Academy of Sciences, at whose sugges-
tion he had made this journey, gave him very little
encouragement on his return. They generously
elected him an academician, but did not amend the
insignificant allowance which they had made towards
his expenses. Shortly after his return to Upsala he
commenced to give lectures ; but the success of these
led to a complaint being made to the heads of the
college that it was against the charter of the university
that lectures should be given by any but those who
had obtained the fidl academical degree. This
opposition to Linnseus was carried to such an extent
that, enraged and baffled, it was on one occasion
only the interposition of the bystanders which pre-
vented him from using his sword on the body of
his chief opponent.

His situation became trying and critical. A few
fellow- students rallied round him, and in 1733 they
resolved to visit some of the mountainous regions
of the country, and placed Linnaeus at their head.
Mineralogy was to be their especial study ; and at
Fahlun, noted for its rich copper mines, he was intro-
duced to Baron Eeuterholm, the governor of the
province, who delighted in studies of nature. He
grew fond of Linnaeus, and eventually placed his
two sons under his care during a travelling tour which
the baron wished them to undertake. A few other
young nobles joined them, and each had assigned to
him a particular and separate branch of observation.

14 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

On their return, Linnaeus established a little college
under the auspices of the baron, and here his lectures
and experiments on the assaying of metals and
other subjects brought him friends and money. They
did something more : they brought across his path
a young lady who was destined to become his wife.
She was the daughter of a physician, to whom a certain
baron had paid his addresses, but without success.
After having won the heart of the young lady, the
lady's father had next to be consulted, and although
he was partially inclined towards Linnaeus, the un-
certain income of the wooer, was the barrier; and the
father finally declared that his daughter should remain
unmarried three years longer, and at the end of that
time he would give his decision.

The three years passed, and at the age of twenty-
seven Linnaeus had a bride ; but even then his prospects
were far from bright. His father-in-law advised him
to study medicine more closely. He became anxious
to obtain his degree ; but poverty stood as a great
barrier. With the aid of some earnings of his wife,
he started with £15 in 1735 for Holland, to obtain
there a diploma which would enable him to practise
physic as a livelihood, or to lecture at the universities.

He took a circuitous route in order that he might
have an opportunity of visiting collections of literary
curiosities as well as of natural history, of which
several cities boasted. At Hamburg there was one
of such collections which occupied his attention for
some considerable time. An amusing incident occurred
at the museum in this city, which, although it added

SIR CHARLES LINNAEUS. 15

somewhat to the already high reputation of young
Linnreus, placed hini for the time being in a some-
what unpleasant dilemma. The eminent founder of
the collection had for years been looked upon as
the fortunate possessor of one of the most marvellous
specimens in the whole animal world, being no less
a phenomenon than a serpent with seven heads. This
curiosity had been one of the most interesting speci-
mens in the museum, and great was the dismay of
the founders to learn, after a careful inspection by
Linnoeus, that the prodigy was the work of a very
clever taxidermist, who appears to have added to the
serpent's one head the jawbones of weasels artfully
covered with serpent's skin.

This serpent had been lodged as security for a
loan of £500, and the seven heads had been readily
accepted as ample guarantee for the money. But
its value was hastily shattered, and after much con-
tention, it was insisted that Linna3iis should prove,
before a carefully-selected committee, his statements
respecting the serpent. This he was prepared to do;
but a Dr. Jaenisch advised him to leave the city at
once, in order to avoid delay and litigation, and this
he did.

This little incident shows how imperfect was much
of the scientific knowledge of that day, and also shows
the wide knowledge of nature which Linnoeus had
acquired.

He succeeded in obtaining his degree : after three
examinations and a public defence of his treatise, he
was rewarded with the dignity he so well merited.

16 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

After this he spent some time at Leyden, then the
seat of the leading fJutch university, where he made
friends with several naturalists. One of these
strongly advised him to publish the result of his
inquiries and investigations. Acting upon this advice,
he published a prospectus occupying fourteen folio
pages, giving his Systema Naturce, which has proved
the foundation of his fame. A celebrated Dr. Boer-
haave took notice of him, and invited him to his
villa some distance from Leyden, where he had a
botanical garden. The doctor had among his trees
one bearing the name of Crategus Aria, which was
looked upon as a rarity. Linnaeus was asked if he
had seen the tree before, and he replied that he had,
and that he had also read the description of it in a
book by Yaillant. The eminent medical man doubted
this, and went so far as to say that his visitor must
be greatly mistaken ; and to prove himself in the right,
went to his library and brought back the book and
referred, when to his great astonishment he found that
Linnaeus was right, and that he had most accurately
rendered the description as given by Yaillant.

On Linnaeus leaving Leyden for Amsterdam, Dr.
Boerhaave gave him a letter of introduction to a
pupil of his who was professor of botany in the
capital of Holland. This Professor Burmann was
engaged at the time of his visit in completing a
description of the plants of the island of Ceylon. In
the course of conversation Burmann showed him a
shrub which he said was a great rarity. Linnaeus
examined it, and pronounced it a species of bay.

SIR CHARLES LINNJEUS. 17

After further interviews, Burmann induced Linn; ens
to remain in his house in order to aid him in the work
he had in hand, and Linnaeus, with his slender
resources well-nigh exhausted, was glad to avail
himself of the board and lodging offered in exchange
for his services, so that he might be able to pursue
his studies.

The Dr. Boerhaave already mentioned now rendered
Linnaeus a further most valuable service. He had a
patient, by name Cliff ort, who was very rich, and
who had spent large sums of money in acquiring
treasures of every description from all parts of the
world; but these he kept in a veritable Olla Podrida
fashion, without almost any attempt at classification.
He was a man who was always imagining himself ill ;
and Dr. Boerhaave advised him to keep a physician
of his own, and to fill this post he recommended a
young Swede then at Amsterdam, who was qualified
as a doctor, but was also an excellent botanist, and
this was Linnaeus.

Burmann and Linnaeus were invited without delay
to the house. In the gardens and hothouses were
many rare and curious productions from the Cape
of Grood Hope. Linnaeus displayed such knowledge
of these, that Cliff ort, on Burmann's expressing his
pleasure on seeing a newly-arrived volume, " The
Natural History of Jamaica," said that Burmann
might have the copy with pleasure if he would leave
him Linnaeus by way of exchange. His offer was thai
of a home and an allowance of 1,000 florins per annum.
And this house of Cliffords at Hartecamp became the

c

18 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

school of his greatness. The villa was surrounded
by treasures from all parts of the world, and there
was everything for which Linnoeus could possibly wish.
In 1736, while here, he published a crude edition
of his "Fundamenta Botanica," which fifteen years
later he greatly extended and revised. Following this
was his " Bibliotheca Botanica," and after this a third
book appeared.

These productions established his fame, while the
new principles which he put forward attracted universal
notice. Naturalists in various countries began to
inquire as to who this new teacher was, and several
learned bodies in Grermany and elsewhere admitted
him to a fellowship of their associations.

In 1736, at the expense of Cliff ort, Linnaeus visited
England, an opportunity for doing which he had long
wished for. Mr. Cliffort was desirous of enriching
his garden with foreign, and especially with North
American plants. He brought with him a letter of
introduction to Sir Hans Sloane, who was a collector
of objects of natural history, and afterwards the
founder of the British Museum. The letter was from
Boerhaave, who said in it : — " The bearer of this
letter is alone worthy of seeing you — alone worthy
of being seen by you. He who shall see you both
together, shall see two men whose like will scarcely
ever be found in the world."

Sir Hans Sloane does not appear to have received
him very cordially, notwithstanding the elaborate letter
of introduction which Linnceus brought with him.

Linnaaus had for vears desired to see the botanical

SIR CHARLES LINN^US. 19

gardens then situated at Chelsea. Philip Miller was
then curator of the grounds, and several amusing
incidents are related of the early interviews between
the young Swede and this celebrated botanist, who
died, it may be mentioned, in 1771.

Singular to say, at the elaborate explanations of
Miller in showing the various specimens, Linnaeus was
silent, and this somewhat tried the patience of Miller,
who was indiscreet enough to say to a friend near
him at the time, but sufficiently loud to be heard
by Linnaeus — " Sure, the botanist of Burgomaster
Cliff ort is a great man — he knows nothing at all of
plants." Miller was particularly fond of giving the
ancient names to the various plants. Linnaeus said,
" Why do you apply these, pray ? We have better
and conciser appellations." Linnaeus very soon showed
the curator that he had more knowledge of botany
than he would at first have given him credit for ;
and it is significant to note that in after years
the collection at Chelsea was arranged according to
the Linnaean system.

It is told of Linnaeus that when he first saw a
common near London, covered with furze bushes in
full bloom, he fell on his knees (see frontispiece),
and, with tears, uttered his thankfulness for so glorious
a sight. When he returned to Sweden he took with
him some plants of furze, but they could not live
through the northern winter.

From London Linnaeus went on to Oxford, where
there was a capital botanical garden. Here he was
made sport of just as he had been at Chelsea, the curator

•JO EMINENT NATURALISTS.

at Oxford remarking to a person while in the presence
of Linnreus, that he (Linnaeus) was the young man
who confounded all botany. After a time, however,
he got on better with these learned sages, and procured
many valuable specimens from both Chelsea and
Oxford for the garden of his employer, Mr. Cliff ort.

Linnreus, after a brief stay in England, returned
to Holland, and very soon became absorbed in his
system of botanical reform. Stoever says of him at
this time : "It required a strong and forcible progress
to bring about such a revolution ; and, in fact, no
time during the whole life of Linnaeus was more
distinguished by an extraordinary activity, none more
fertile for the republic of science than the year 1737.
It was in the course of this same year when Linnaeus
published about 200 printed sheets. Such a deal of
writing would have been no novelty, and the young
Swede had long before been excelled in it. But what
constituted its pre-eminence was, that the six works
which Linnaeus published in the course of the year,
and which diffused the reform of botany from Harte-
camp throughout Europe, were all original, and by
more than one-half large classical works, replete with
the most difficult researches, new representations, and
accurate critical doctrines. It would have done infinite
honour to his diligence had he only produced one of
those works in a whole twelvemonth. The plans and
materials for some of them had certainly been pre-
viously collected, but the whole required to be digested
and arranged."

The " Grenera Plantarum " was the first book

SIR CHARLES LINNJflUS. 21

which Linnaous published after his return from England,
an octavo book of 384 pages. He described in this
book upwards of 935 species of plants. This was
followed by other books, one of them being a very
comprehensive descriptive and scientific account of
Mr. Cliffords collection.

To Linnaeus we owe much for having simplified
the study of botany. A. frequent remark of his own
was that the maze of ancient names " resembled a chaos,
the mother of which was ignorance, the father custom,
and the godfather prejudice." He wrote to a friend,
" Why shoidd we retain such useless jargon as
Monolasiocablenomenophyllorum, Hypophylocarpoden-
dorum, and all the whole family of these outlandish
names ? "

So he attacked the old system in vigorous language,
meeting with much severe criticism, opposition, and
ridicule.

In the midst of all this work financial difficulties
surrounded Cliffort, and he was obliged to leave his
beautiful villa and its valuable gardens, and shortly
after this event he joined a collegiate acquaintance at
a salary of 800 florins a year, to aid in the rearranging
of the botanical garden at Leyden. While engaged
in this work he published two other works, which
added materially to his reputation, and he was now
beginning to see the object of his ambition gratified,
and the accuracy of his method acknowledged.

The Dutch Government proposed to him to go out
to the Cape of Good Hope on a botanical expedition
at the expense of the Republic, and on his return

22 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

they promised to give him the professorship of botany
in a Dutch university, but this offer he declined.

It will be remembered that the future father-in-law
of Linnaeus had fixed three years as the period for
which he must wait for Ins intended bride. These
three years had passed, and Linnaeus had been absent
almost the entire period, corresponding with the fair
Elizabeth, to whom he was greatly attached. A
rival to him appeared, and endeavoured to persuade
her that her lover would never return to Sweden ;
but a friend of Linnaeus, who knew his feelings well,
told Miss Moraeus exactly how matters stood, and so
the intentions of the rival were quite frustrated.

Linnaeus wished to travel further, and visited
Leipsic, Upper and Lower Saxony, Denmark, and
Paris, which city he had longed for some time to
visit. One or two learned men said of him in Paris
that he was " a young enthusiast who confounds all,
and whose sole merit consists in having plunged
botany into a state of anarchy." One naturalist,
Gruettard, however, said, "Don't laugh, good people,
don't laugh at Linnaeus, the time will come when
he will laugh at you all." And so it was, for in
later years, the royal gardens were arranged according
to his system. Several literary honours were con-
ferred on him during his stay in Paris. From the
French capital he started for Stockholm.

The period of his career had now arrived when
he was to experience severe opposition to his system
and much criticism from his contemporary botanists.
These were very numerous, and there was on the

SIR CHARLES LLWV.IS. 23

part of some much rancour and personal antipathy
displayed. He promulgated his theories, to his
credit be it said, without intentionally wounding
the feelings of others; but this did not prevent him
from making a very vigorous defence of his
system when there was need. Botanists twice his
age were somewhat chagrined that one so young
should thus boldly seek to overthrow the methods
which they had all adopted for so many years.

Many of his opponents were men of great repu-
tation, and in some cases of high social standing.
One of these wrote of him as follows : " Linnaeus, a
pupil and friend of Baron Haller, with whom he was
well acquainted by several years of domestic connec-
tion, had in the course of a few years pulled
down the whole structure of botany, that he might
erect on the ruins of his predecessors his own
system: he rejected everything foreign to his own
precepts, and sent the greatest botanists into a
school, where they were first to learn the signification
of the names he had created and the laws of his
system. Haller, with placid eye, saw this might}'
dictator step forth; he was not insensible of the
necessity of a reform, but saw at the same time,
that he went too far. He followed Linnaeus wherever
he thought the truth was his guide, but where the
latter only dealt in hypotheses, he there quitted him."

It is impossible to follow all that was said against
Linnaeus at this time; but in his system thus being
severely criticised and examined it only made its
ultimate success the more assured.

24 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

During the year 1737 he received many congratu-
latory letters from eminent botanists in all parts of
the world. Sir Hans Sloane wrote : "I am so
uncommonly pleased with your "Flora Lapponica'
that I very much wish to see the other parts of
the natural history of that country completed, and
publicly described by you."

Linnreus published the last edition of his " System of
Nature" in 1766, when he was advanced in life, and
in his preface he says : "I have ranged through the
thick and shady forests of nature ; I have to and fro
found sharp and perplexing thorns, I have, as much
as possible, avoided them ; but learned at the same
time that foresight and attention do not always
conciliate perfect and entire safety. I have there-
fore quietly borne the derision of grinning satyrs,
and the jumps of monkeys upon my shoulders. I have
entered the career and completed the course assigned
by fate."

He reached Stockholm in the September of 1738,
after an absence of three and a-half years. The return
was a source of pleasure to him. It was only natural
that he should anticipate, after his laborious
researches and fatiguing travels, honours and
respect wordd be paid him. But alas ! with him as
with others, he was to experience the disheartening
truth that " a prophet has no honour in his own
country." College dignitaries and professors made
sport of his botanical knowledge, and ridiculed his
pretensions.

Again did the necessities of life compel him to

SIR CHARLES LINNiEUS. '-■'>

seriously consider what lie was to do for a livelihood,
for "botanists must eat as well as other mortals, and
he forthwith turned his attention to medicine and
the curing of patients. In this he was not by any
means successful at first, for the public were not
slow to grasp the fact that even if he were good as
a botanist, a botanist was one thing and a doctor
another; and so he had many clouded days, and fortune
appeared to have deserted him.

A gentleman in a good position in Stockholm
suffered from what had been termed an incurable
complaint, but in a fortnight Linnaeus, either by
superior skill or one of those fortunate events of life,
he was able to cure his patient in a fortnight ; and
soon his fame spread in the city, patients became
abundant and fees plentiful. One of the ladies in
waiting on the Queen of Sweden had a cough, and
Linnaeus had been asked to prescribe for this. He
made for the lady some lozenges which she could
always carry about with her. One day while she was
engaged in playing a quiet game of cards with the
Queen, the Queen noticed her place something in her
mouth, and asked what it was. The Queen had a
cough at that particular time and became interested
in the remedy. Linnaeus was called in, and cured
the Queen almost immediately ; and so this trouble-
some cough gave him such a step upwards that he
never afterwards looked back.

With such assured success, the future father-in-law
could no longer withhold his consent to the marriage
of his daughter with Linnaeus, and they were married

26 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

in June, 1739, after some years of patient working
and waiting, which made him, however, none the
worse husband.

Linnraus had now many friends in influential posi-
tions, and it was his desire to found a learned society
in Stockholm similar to what Berlin and Groettingen
then possessed. Such a society was founded in Stock-
holm, with six members, and himself as the first
president, in the same year as his marriage took
place. The membership increased, and in two years'
time it was constituted the Eoyal Academy of Sciences.
The society still exists and has done much good in
making known useful knowledge and discoveries.

He still continued his practice, which had by this
time produced him a splendid income. In 1741, he
was selected by the state to travel into unexplored
parts of Sweden for the purpose of discovering plants
which might be useful for dyeing purposes, and also to
search for a suitable clay for the making of chinaware.

At the age of thirty-three he was appointed professor
of physic and anatomy in the university of Upsala.
The botanical gardens of the city had been allowed to
fall into a condition of neglect, and Linnseus devoted
now several years to their care and development. In
1745, they had, under his skilful management, not only
recovered then former prestige, but would now compare
very favourably with the gardens at Kew, Paris, aud

ewhere. The embellishing and enriching of these
botanical gardens at Upsala was the favourite study of
his life. His academical lectures on botany were
delivered to crowded audiences, and new life was

SIR CHARLES LINNJEUS. 27

altogether infused by him into the university. The
number of students was usually about 500, but during
the year 1759, when Linnaeus was rector, the number
had grown to 1,500, and to profit by the instruction
of so able a teacher, students had gone from England,
Bussia, and even America.

He gave lectures on botany, natural history, the
medicinal virtues of plants, the Materia Medica, and
on the dietetics and knowledge of diseases. One of
his most eminent students said of him : " Science
streamed with peculiar pleasantness from his lips.
He spoke with a conviction and perspicuity, which
his deep penetration, his clear notions, and ardent
zeal inspired him with. It was impossible to be
near him without attention, without participating in
Ins enthusiasm. He communicated to his pupils the
greatest part of the ideas and materials of the thirty
disputations which were held under him till the year
1750. They contained real treasures and elucidations
of science. "

Not only did Linnaeus make valuable additions to
botanical literature at this time but he published a
description of the Swedish animals, birds, insects, and
other branches of natural history.

Honours now followed each other quickly. A
medal was struck, showing on one side a bust of
Linnaeiis, and on the other a flattering inscription.

His father died at the age of seventy-four, in 1748,
and a year before that time his son, whom he had
at one time designed for a shoemaker, was made
Dean of the College of Physicians.

28 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

As with grand old Martin Luther so it was with
Linnaeus — he belonged to the world, for his researches
benefited not alone Sweden but the whole of Europe.
His lecture-room became the nursery of eminent men.
His enthusiasm, his thirst for science, became their
own, and he gave them opportunities to exert
those qualities. From Upsala the pupils of Linnaeus
travelled to all quarters of the globe to sti;dy
nature.

Linnaeus at this period says : — " If I look back
upon the fate of naturalists, must I call madness or
reason that desire which allures us to seek and examine
plants ? The irresistible attractions of nature can
alone induce us to face so many dangers and troubles.
No science ever had so many martyrs as natural
history. Pliny, the prince of nature among the
Eomans, plunged into the fiery abyss of Mount Etna.
Simon Pauli, from his love of plants, broke his leg ;
Clausius, an enthusiast, equally unfortunate, was thrown
into irons and robbed of all his treasures in Barbary ;
Lippi was murdered in the wilds of Ethiopia ; Steller
fell a victim to his exertions in Siberia ; Grmelin was
thrown into a dungeon by the Tartars ; Bannister was
hurled headlong down a rock in Virginia ; Barelli, and
others, without number, fell a sacrifice to their scientific
exertions in natural history."

Many of the pupils of Linnaeus fell victims to
science. One died in India in search of specimens.
Another, a brave youth, died after he had travelled
through Palestine and some parts of Arabia, having
made a very valuable collection of plants and other

SIR CHARLES LIXX.KIS. 29

things. Three others of his students found graves
in Asia.

Although not a few of his pupils thus met with
death early in life, Linnaeus had many pupils who
were more fortunate in their career. One, Sparrmann,
accompanied Captain Cook in his voyage round the
world, and was afterwards engaged at the British
Museum until his death.

The academic career of a college professor and prin-
cipal will almost of necessity be the most important
part in the entire life of that individual ; and it was
during the ten years between 1750 and 1760 that
the reputation and learning of Linnaeus became con-
solidated and ennobled.

It was dming this period that the royal museums
of Sweden received the greatest amount of attention
from the nation ; and in 1754 Linnaeus arranged and
published a description of some of these collections.

During the period named Linnaeus spent much time
in the royal palaces of Sweden, classifying and cata-
loguing the collections, but became for some time very
subject to gout. Whether the cure effected in him
may be worth anything I do not know, but he ate
most liberally of strawberries, and to this habit he
attributed the disappearance of this troublesome com-
plaint from his system.

Botanists have for centuries been open to the charge
of giving unpronounceable and impossible-to-be-remem-
bered Latin names to their specimens. Linnaeus was
about the first to introduce the common names. One
writer of that time said : " If a woman, or any of

;J0 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

those men who are so much like them, asked the name
of some herb or garden flower, than to throw np,
by way of answer, a long train of Latin words, which
sounded like a conjuration of hobgoblins."

Had Linneeus done nothing else but this, it would
indeed be a noble monument to his memory. The
applying of simple names by him promoted and
facilitated the study of botany. It got rid of the
deterring appearance of an arduous science. Par-
ticularly did it popularise botanical studies among the
fair sex, and Linn&eus had no greater admirers than
the Queen of Sweden and her family and other ladies
immediately connected with the court. Not only was
Linnaeus on terms of intimacy with the Swedish royal
court, but in 1773 he received an offer from the then
Spanish king to be chief botanist in the Madrid
gardens at a high salary, accompanied by an offer
to at once create him a nobleman. This flattering
proposal he declined for himself, but obtained it for
one of his own pupils.

All through the studies of Linnaeus he kept strictly
in view the curative properties of plants, as well as
the furtherance of botanical science. His work, the
" Materia Medica," which was for years the best book
on medicine, shows how much of a doctor as well
as a botanist he was. He laboured long and earnestly
to reduce diseases to definite and certain species with
as much accuracy as a botanist he had done with regard
to the description of plants.

Honours began freely to fall upon him. The
different academies of Europe vied with each other

SIR CHARLES LINN2ETJS. 31

which of them should first have the honour of electing
Linnaeus one of their members. The lloyal Society
of London elected him a corresponding member in
1763, following as they did the example set by Paris,
Florence, and other cities. Frederick the Great, King
of Prussia, spoke in the highest terms of encomium
of the work and private life of Linnaeus.

About this time he received the honour of knight-
hood. His public activity continued up to 1776, when
he had reached his sixty-eighth year. Then the feeble
and infirm state of his health suffered a fresh shock ;
his senses appeared to be losing their power, and his
tongue, palsied as it were, almost denied its office.
His biographer states that " even in this melancholy
and painful state nature still remained his only comfort
and relief. He used to be carried to his museum,
where he viewed the treasures which he had collected
with so much labour, and manifested a particular
delight in examining the rarities and new specimens
which were constantly being sent to him from all parts
of the world."

Apoplexy again seized him, and after much physical
suffering he expired in a gentle slumber on January 10,
1778.

He received a public funeral, and the king ordered
a gold medal to be struck in honour of the late
botanist.

Probably the highest monuments which have been
erected to his memory are the Linna3an societies which
have been established at various times in the leading
cities of the world. That in London was founded

32 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

in 1788, and has connected with it to-day men of great
scientific research and renown. This society was pre-
ceded by one established in Paris, and was followed
by one in Leipsic, established in 1790.

The royal prince of Denmark had a service of
porcelain made, on which the flora of his country
were painted, according to the Linnsean system.

It is impossible in a limited space like the present
to give a list of the published works of the great
naturalist. Many of these were distinguished by
great research and thought.

His activity during the working years of his life
was as great as his thirst for truth. The strictest
order, the most punctual regularity, distinguished all
his actions. In the summer he usually slept five
hours, rising at three in the morning, and in the
winter he invariably rose at six. He was most genial
and kind in manner, a true and tender husband and
father to the six children who were born to them.

With a keen remembrance of his own poverty,
he frequently returned the class fees to the poorer
students of the university of Upsala.

His coat of arms included the motto, " To spread
fame by deeds." Throughout his life he had a pro-
found adoration of the DivinnVy, and never lost sight
of this in all his researches. \Vhenever he found
an opportunity of expatiating on the greatness, the
providence, the omnipotence of God, which frequently
happened in his lectures and botanical excursions,
his heart glowed with emotion, and a deep religious
fervour entered into his discourses.

SIR CHARLES LINNJEUS. 33

His habits were simple, and he at all times dis-
played great kindness of heart.

During the more than a century that lias passed
since his death, his fame has not decreased. It is true
that to-day he is looked upon more as a classifier than
a discoverer. He reduced chaos in botany to order
by a system of sexual classification, which has greatly
benefited the entire world of science.

He was the great master-mind which named and
arranged botanical science, and whose efforts, more than
the efforts of any other single individual, either before
or since his death, gave an impetus to studies which
have given joy and intelligence to thousands of all
countries.

Botanical science owes much to Linnoeus, and for
centuries to come he will receive the homage of
posterity.

i)

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P.,

F.R.S.

apology is required for introducing
the name of this well-known public
man in this book. Amidst a busy
commercial and political life, Sir
John Lubbock makes time to pursue
natural history studies with all the
zest of a born naturalist.

Anyone who has come in contact
with him cannot fail to have been
struck with his exceedingly clear
and forcible sentences in expressing himself.

Science has from earliest years possessed great charms
for him, and in 1881 he filled a well-deserved position
in the presidency of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, and gave on the occasion of
the annual meeting an address Ml of vigour and
stiggestiveness.

He was born on April 30th, 1834, so that now he
is in the prime of life, and is one of the busiest

34

Sir John Lubbock, M.P.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. 37

yet most accessible of our public men. He comes
from a very good stock. The connection of the family
with the bank in Lombard Street dates back to 1750,
and in monetary matters Sir John has taken a most
active interest.

His seat at High Elms, near Farnborough, Kent,
is beautifully situated in the midst of an estate of
some fifteen hundred acres. Here most of those
experiments with, and observations of, insects, Crus-
tacea, &c, have been carried on, and in these natural
history pursuits he has been greatly aided by
his daughters and nieces. The late Mr. Charles
Darwin, whose memory will be the more honoured
the more he is understood, was for a long time
a near neighbour of Sir John Lubbock, and
their frequent intercourse gave, no doubt, depth
and definiteness to the studies of Sir John, and in
the papers read before the various learned societies,
and in the books he has published, it is very
evident how greatly his mind was impregnated
with Darwin's theories and principles.

In the very first speech made by him in
Parliament the subject under discussion was
education, and in the course of his speech he
said : " Every one who loves children must know
that they are eager for information — that they long
to understand the facts of nature, and how every
bird and beast and flower is a wronder and a
delight to them." In 1S79 he made a motion in
the House of Commons for the introduction of
science-teaching into elementary schools.

38 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

His own studies in natural history were in the
first instance chiefly devoted to the structure and
character of certain groups of insects and Crustacea.
Much that he has written on points of dispute and
uncertainty on fixed points in connection with these
lias an interest only for the specialist.

There is, however, much that he has written and
spoken which has been within the comprehension of
the general public, and on the habits and peculiarities
of ants in particular he has caught the popular style ;
and naturalists owe him a debt of gratitude for
probably more than any other writer having familiar-
ized the public with most interesting facts respecting
ants ; and further than this, has given to many
young folks and adults to take up the study of
the lower forms of insect life.

Those who have heard him lecture know full
well with what an interest he envelops his subject ;
and by way of illustrating his style I will give
portions of a lecture on "Ants" which he delivered
some time ago before the Leeds Philosophical
Society.

Sir John Lubbock, in the course of his lecture, said
that to the true lover of nature there was no one species
of animal or plant which would not repay even the
devotion of a lifetime. No doubt some were more
interesting than others, and few more so than the ant.
In bodily structure monkeys approached nearer to man
than did any other animals, but when we considered the
habits of ants, their social organisation, their large
communities, their elaborate habitations, their road-

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. 39

ways, their possession of domestic animals, and ov< u
in some cases of slaves, it must be admitted that they
had a fair claim to rank next to man in the scale
intelligence. In this country we had thirty kinds ; but
ants became more numerous m species, as well as in
individuals, in warmer countries, and more than on i
thousand were known. No two species of ant ;
were identical in habits, and, on various accounts,
their mode of life was far from easy to unravel.
In the first place, most of their time was passed
underground. All the education of the young was
carried on in the dark. Again, ants were essentially
gregarious, and within the same species the indi-
viduals seemed to differ in character, while even th i !
same individual woidd behave very differently under
different circumstances. The life of an ant fell into
four well-marked periods, — those of the egg, larva or
grub, the pupa or chrysalis, and the perfect insect.
Under ordinary circumstances an ants' nest, like a
bee-hive, contained three kinds of individuals — workers,
or imperfect females, which constituted the great
majority, males, and perfect females. There were,
however, often several queens in an ants' nest, while
there was never more than one in the hive. The
queens had wings, but after a single flight they tore
off their wings and did not again quit the nest. An:>
had their desires, their passions, even their caprices.
The young were absolutely helpless. Their communities
were sometimes so numerous that, perhaps, London and
Pekin were almost the only human cities that could
compare with them. They were organized oommunities,

40 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

labouring with the utmost harmony for the common
good. Various observers had recorded, in the case of
ants, instances of attachment and affection. In the
whole course of his observations he had never seen a
quarrel between two ants belonging to the same nest ;
within the limits of the community all was harmony.
On the other hand, it must be confessed that ants
not belonging to the same nest were always enemies, even
if belonging to the same species. Among ants, as
among men, all were not Grood Samaritans. Numerous
experiments he had made, with a view to test the
characteristics of ants in this and other matters. He
had even gone so far as to make a number drunk
by putting them into spirits, since no ant would
voluntarily degrade herself by getting drunk. The
sober ants seemed much puzzled at finding their friends
in this helpless and discreditable state. They took
them up, and carried them about for a while in an
aimless sort of way, as if they did not know what
to do with their drunkards any more than we do.
Ultimately, however, the results were these : the
ants removed twenty-five friends and thirty strangers.
Of the friends twenty were carried into the nest, and
five were thrown into the water. Of the strangers,
on the contrary, twenty-four were picked up, taken to
the edge of the moat, and thrown, or rather dropped,
into the water; only six were taken into the
nest, and these were shortly afterwards brought out
again and thrown away. Ants had the power of
remembering and of recognizing their friends, and had
been known to fall into mutual caresses with their

silt JOHN LUBBOCK. 41

antennae. In most species the power of smell was very
keen. On the other hand, as regarded their sense of
hearing, the case was very different. Over and over
aerain he had made the loudest and most shrill noises
he could with a penny pipe, a dog-whistle, a violin,
as well as the most piercing and startling sounds he
could produce with his own voice, all without effect.
At the same time he would not infer from this that
they were really deaf, though it certainly seemed
that their range of hearing was very different from
ours. Our range was, however, after all, very
limited, and the universe was probably full of music
which we could not perceive. It was far from
improbable that ants might produce sounds entirely
beyond our range of hearing ; indeed it wa s not
impossible that insects might possess a sense, or
rather perhaps sensations, of which we could no
more form an idea than we should have been able
to conceive red or green had the human race been
born blind. The organs of vision were in most
ants very complex and very conspicuous. There
were generally three eyes, arranged in a triangle
on the top of their heads, and on each side a large
compound eye, containing sometimes more than 2,000
facets between them. The single eyes probably
saw in the same manner as ours did. But how
about the compound eyes ? There were two theories
as to the manner in which these eyes saw. One
supposed that each facet acted as a separate eye.
But if the male ant saw a thousand oueens, only
when one was really present, it would seem a very

42 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

bewildering privilege. The prevailing opinion of
entomologists now was that each facet took in one
point of the field of view, so that, in fact, they
saw a sort of mosaic. Bnt even this theory was
open to serious objections, and the whole question
was full of difficulty, and one of many still remaining
to be solved. From experiments he had made, he
concluded that ants were capable of distinguishing
between different colours. He had gone beyond,
and had attempted to determine how far their limits
of vision were the same as ours. These attempts
had satisfied him that ants perceived rays at the
violet end of the spectrum which to our eyes were
quite invisible. Nevertheless, the sight of ants did
not seem to be very good. Much of what had
been said as to the powers of communication
possessed by bees and ants depended on the fact
that if one of them in the course of her rambles
had discovered a supply of food a number of
others soon found their way to the store. This,
however, did not necessarily imply any power of
describing localities. If the bees or the ants merely
followed their more fortunate companion, or if they
hunted her by scent, the matter was comparatively
simple. If, on the contrary, the others had the
route described to them the case became very
different. Under ordinary circumstances, if an ant
discovered a stock of food she carried as much as
possible away to the nest and then returned for more,
accompanied generally by several friends. On their
return these brought others, and in this way a string

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. 43

of ants was soon established. He concluded from
numerous experiments that when large numbers of
ants came to food they followed one another,
being also, to a certain extent, guided by scent.
The fact therefore did not imply any considerable
power of intercommunication. On the other hand
they certainly could, he thought, transmit simple
ideas. Experiments, moreover, seemed to indicate the
possession by ants of something approaching to
language. It was generally stated in entomological
works that the males of ants died almost
immediately. No doubt this was generally the case.
It had also been the general opinion that the females
lived about a year. He had found, however, that the
life of the queens and workers was much longer than
had been supposed. He had now two queens which
had lived since 1874. They must therefore be at least
nine years old. He had also kept workers alive more
than seven years. In industry ants were not surpassed
even by bees and wasps. They worked all day, and in
warm weather, if need be, even at night too. As a
general rule each species lived by itself. There were,
however, interesting exceptions. Most ants, indeed
woidd carry off the larvae and pupa3 of others if
they got a chance, and this explained, or at any
rate threw light upon, that most remarkable pheno-
menon, the existence of slavery among ants. The
food of ants consisted of insects, great numbers of
which they destroyed, of honey, honey-dew, and
fruit — indeed, scarcely any animal or sweet substance
came amiss to them. Our English ants did net

44 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

store up provision for the future. Their food was
not of a nature which would admit of this. Some
of the southern ants, however, laid up stores of
grain. Some at least did take steps to provide
themselves with food for the future. Ants were
not without their enemies. In addition to birds
and other large foes were some very small flies of
the genus P/tora, that might be observed in summer
every now and again making a dash at a particular
ant. Curiously enough there seemed to be in ant
life three principal types, offering an analogy to the
three great phases in the history of human develop-
ment— the hunting, the pastoral, and the agri-
cultural stages. In face even of the facts upon
record, it was impossible not to ask ourselves how
far were ants mere exquisite automatons, how far
were they conscious beings ? When we saw an ant-
hill, tenanted by thousands of industrious inhabitants,
excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making roads,
guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the
young, tending their domestic animals, each one
fulfilling its duties industriously and without con-
fusion, it was difficult altogether to deny to them
the gift of reason. Observations tended to confirm
the opinion that their mental powers differed from
those of man not so much in kind as in degree. In
conclusion, he might say that, notwithstanding the
labours of many great naturalists, there were in
natural history few more promising or extensive
fields for research than the habits of ants.

Some of his papers and addresses, particularly one

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. 1 5

on the "Origin of Civilization," have created long and
warm discussion ; but even those who differ radically fr< >m
his conclusions acknowledge the earnestness with which
Sir John desires to seek truth in all his researches.

English naturalists may well be proud of Sir John
Lubbock, and his reputation has spread far and wide;
and foreign learned societies have not been slow to
recognize the value of his position as a scientist. He
has received the degree of LL.D. from the University
of Dublin, from the University of Oxford the degree of
D.C.L. The best degree of all, however, lies in the fact
that when he writes or speaks, particularly on science
subjects, a very large proportion of our population stop
to read or listen to one of the subjects upon which he is
now a recognized authority. We trust that for many
years Sir John Lubbock may be spared to pursue those
subjects dear to him, and to enlighten the public on
subjects of natural science.

THOMAS EDWARD.

cotlaxd lias reared prominent men in
almost every branch of scientific and
philosophic literature. Her annals
are full of the records of men who,
with no greater stock in trade than
average brains, indomitable perse-
verance and laborious consistency
in a particular direction have yet be-
come renowned in the specific branch
or branches of study to which they
have devoted attention. The country beyond the Tweed
in fact breeds men, but cannot keep them, and British
reputation has been ably maintained and increased by
numerous examples furnished by her sturdy sons.

Many eminent naturalists are of Scotch birth or
descent ; but it is only with one of them that at the
moment we wish to deal, and he is so thoroughly repre-
sentative of a large number of his countrymen, that a
brief sketch of his life will but illustrate much that
might be said of many.

4<;

Thomas Edward.
From Photo, by Bremner, Banff.

THOMAS EDWARD. 49

The passion for Natural History which possessed
Thomas Edward from his earliest years, was not in-
herited from his father or mother, for neither parent
appears to have had even the most ordinary proclivities
for the study of nature. The father of Edward at the
time of his birth was a militiaman, and Thomas saw the
light of day at Grosport, where the regiment was at that
time stationed. This took place on Christmas Day, 1814,
and a few years afterwards, on the disbanding of the
militia, the father and mother took up their residence in
Aberdeen, where they remained for some years.

How Edward first acquired a taste for natural history
he never knew, but it is very certain that from his earliest
years he displayed the most precocious tendency for
insects, and in fact, any representative of the animal
world which came under his notice. When asked the
question in his old age what was the origin of his love
for natural history, by Dr. Samuel Smiles, who has
devoted one of his most readable and instructive bio-
graphies to Thomas Edward, he replied, " I suppose it
must have originated in the same internal impulse which
prompted me to catch those flies in the window." (This
he had made vigorous attempts to do when a mere babe
in his mother's arms.) " 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 child to get at, no doubt, the first living
animals he had ever seen, at length grew in the man
into an irresistible and unconquerable passion, and
engendered in him an insatiable longing for, and earnest
desire to be always amongst such things." This was

r.

50 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

the only reason lie could ever give for being a lover of
nature.

At the age of ten months he could walk, and no
sooner had he found the use of his legs than he would
toddle out among the ducks, hens, cats, and dogs. A
litter of pigs greatly excited his curiosity, and when he
was missing and his mother asked, " Where's Tarn ? '
the answer as a rule was, " Oh ! he's awa wi' the pigs."
The father of Edward was a weaver at one of the mills
outside Aberdeen, and the cottage in which they lived
was in close proximity to several small streamlets run-
ning into the sea. These were prolific in eels, worms,
crabs, and snails, and a neighbouring heap of refuse
provided him with beetles, insects, rats, and other kindred
vermin. To Edward they conveyed no sense of being
vermin, and his pinafore was full of such a miscellaneous
litter as he could pick up, and these he woidd take
home and deposit in drawers and cupboards, to the
horror of his father and mother, who had the clearing
out of these nests on numerous occasions. For these
tricks he was scolded and beaten, but neither seemed to
produce any effect upon him. If he was set to rock the
cradle of the baby who came after him, he would wait
until his mother's back was turned, and then off would
start on his wanderings, generally dragging any willing
boy or boys whom he could find to accompany him.
He became so troublesome as a wanderer, that his father
determined that he would one day take his clothes with
him to the factory. His mother had to go out for milk,
and previous to doing so had pinned a red flannel petti-
f oat roimd his neck. No sooner was she out of the

THOMAS EDWARD. 51

house, than he dodged her and away he started for his
old haunts. When his father came home, great was his
surprise to learn that he had disappeared in the morning,
and had not been seen again by his mother during the
day. Very angry was the father. By-and-bye a
neighbour came in and said that the lad had returned,
and was warming himself at her fireside. Tom had,
however, very soon followed her, and heard most of his
father's threats of what he would do for him. The
woman, however, got a promise that he should " no' be
licked," and at this the lad came forward. Immediately
the father caught sight of the petticoat hanging loosely
around his neck, covered with mud, and his legs and
arms in a like predicament, he burst into a loud fit of
laughter. That ramble brought on a serious fever,
from which it was months before he recovered. During
this fever he talked much of his beasties, and his first
sensible words were, " Mother, where are my crabs and
bandies that I brocht name last nicht ? "

A number of boys out in the woods one day noticed
hanging to a branch of a tree, a bees' " byke," or nest.
None of them dared venture up the tree to try and get
it, but Edward, with more boldness than the rest,
climbed it and found when he got near the byke, that
his Scotch bonnet would not be large enough, neither
would his stocking, and, as nothing else appeared
available, he took off his shirt, and, after being severely
stung, he managed to get it safely into his nether gar-
ment, and folding it up tightly, started for home. He
arrived safely there, and deposited his treasure in an
old iron porridge kettle, and attempted to steal quietly

52 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

into bed. His younger brother noticed the absence of
the shirt, and shouted out to their parents. Up the
stairs came father and mother, and on the appearance of
the strap of which he had often made acquaintance, he
confessed where his shirt was to be found, and offered
to go and fetch it for his father to show him that there
really was something peculiar about it. The father
declined this proof, and they poured some boiling water
on it. In the morning they found that what master
Tarn had really brought home was — a wasps' nest.

Schooldays came on, and he was sent to a dame's
school to be out of the way, and here he became a
dreadful truant. The help of his grandmother was
called in to take him to school, and this she did day
after day, but he would trick her in a number of ways
that he became the bane of the poor old woman's life.
One day she had followed him on one of these truant
excursions, down to the Denburn, a little distance from
Aberdeen. Here he was searching for horse-leeches,
and while he was in the act of getting one of these, he
saw his grandmother's form reflected in the water, and
at once dropped the stone which he was lifting up, and
off he started as fast as his legs would carry him. The
poor old lady made a clutch at him, but missed her
footing, and fell headlong into the water. The dame
who kept the school, if she did not teach her little folks
much, had at least the merit of possessing much Scotch
piety. She prayed with the children twice a day.
Young Edward became a perfect dread to her. His
pockets were perpetually full of all kinds of live stock,
and time after time, he srot his ears boxed whilst he

THOMAS EDWARD. 53

was emptying them at the nearest safe place. But all
the corporal punishment which he ever received, did
not deter him from following the bent of his inclina-
tions, and he became not a whit better. The more he
was punished at home, and scolded at school, the more
he visited his favourite haunts.

One day, he took with him to the dame's school a
jackdaw, which became very fond of him, and he of it.
His mother had become tired of its noise at home. He
received strict injunctions to get rid of it, and what to
do with it he did not know. At last he hit upon the
plan of lodging it in his baggy trousers, and so went
into the room where the school was held. During the
time the scholars were on their knees, the jackdaw had
struggled to get its head out between the top of the
lad's trousers and his vest, and then commenced its
peculiar noise, startling the old dame out of her wits.
In answer to her hurried questions as to what it was, she
was informed that it was " a beast of Tarn Edward's,"
and the youngster was seized by the coat collar, and
carried bodily out of the room, and deposited safely
into the street. The old dame had had quite enough of
young Edward, and that was the last of his first experi-
ences at school. Edward was not more fortunate at his
second school. He was very soon ignominiously dis-
missed for taking horse-leeches in broken bottles.

A third school was found for him, but there seemed
to be a dreadful fate hanging over the youngster. His
reputation for carrying beasts about with him had
spread to every school in the district, and this bad name
clung dreadfully to him. On a hot summer's day, one

54 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

of the masters received a dreadful bite from a centipede.
Nobody in the school would acknowledge to having
brought it there, and young Edward was called up.

He was asked, did he bring it, and his reply was
" No." This so enraged the master, who was suffering
from the bite, that he gave him a double punishment,
one for bringing it, and the other for telling a lie.
Even after this severe beating with a strap, he per-
sisted in saying that he had not taken it there, and
after each relay of whacks, the master only seemed to
lose his temper the more. Edward's back and hands
received at this time the worst punishment of any of
the many inflictions of this nature with which he had
been visited. Out of breath, the master finally took him
by the collar, and thrust him forcibly out of the school.
Towards nightfall, Edward went home, and at night
his father intended to give him a second edition of what
he had received at school, but it was found that his
shirt could not be taken off, owing to blood having
flowed from the cuts, and clotted. Gro back to that
school he would not, and he has said in after life, that
his statement about having taken the centipede was
perfectly true.

He was too young to go to work, and so for some
time he could do pretty well as he chose, and he took
every advantage of doing so. His school became the
seabeach and the little rivulets which ran into the sea.
On one of these wandering expeditions he had a singular
adventure. While searching among the heather and
stones for specimens of natural history, he caught
sight of a peculiar animal. He lost sight of it, and

THOMAS EDWARD. 55

began to tear up the heather, and as he rested for a
time, another lad came up and asked, " Fad are ye
looking for ? "

" A thing like an eel," he replied ; " will ye come
and help me?': "Na, na!' said the lad; "I dinna
want to be bitten to death ; but I ken that what ye are
looking for is among that heap o' stanes there."

Away went Edward, and commenced lifting off the
stones one by one, but no eel did he see. In despair,
he turned over a heap of turf which was near, and there
was the ugly creature he had been long in search of.
Down he pounced on it in a moment with both hands,
and grasped it tight. Away he started home and ran
in to his mother with the thing wriggling in his hands,
saying, " See, see, mither, what a bonnie beastie ! ' Away
she fled, and some neighbours after her, with the cry of
" A snake ! " " A snake ! ' He was told to take it to
Doctor Ferguson, a chemist near, and there he went,
followed by a number of boys, who kept, however, at a
very respectful distance. When the doctor saw it, he
ordered the boy out of the shop, and told him to stand
in the middle of the street until he had got a bott] .
This was soon found, and he was told to put it in there
and cork it up at once. He did so safely, and then
received from the chemist fourpence for the biggest
adder which had ever been seen in the whole country.

He was fast acquiring idle habits, and the parents
began to think what trade he could be placed at, and
although only six years old he went to work at a tobacco
factory for fourteenpence per week. He did not si ay 1< >ng
here, for he had heard that at one of the factories some

56 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

few miles from where they were living, the boys earned
more, so after a good deal of persuasion he was allowed
to go. In order to get his breakfast, and be at the mill
at the proper time, he had to be up by four in the morn-
ing, and rarely got home before nine. His way from
their home lay partially through thickly- wooded fields,
and partially by the side of a burn or brook. These in
the summer time were very pleasant, but in the winter
bleak and uninviting. Years afterwards, when relating
the facts connected with his life, to Dr. Samuel Smiles,
who has given us such an interesting account of this
self-made naturalist, he said, " People may say of fac-
tories what they please, but I liked this factory. It was
a happy time for me whilst I remained there. It was
situated in the centre of a beautiful valley, almost
embowered amongst tall and luxuriant hedges of
hawthorn, with watercourses and shadowy trees between,
and large woods and plantations beyond. It teemed
with nature, and natural objects. The woods were easy
of access during our meal-hours. What lots of nests !
What insects, wild flowers, and plants, the like of which
I had never seen before ! Prominent amongst was the
Scottish nightingale, which lay concealed in the reedy
copses, or by the margin of the mill-lades. Oh ! how I
wondered at the little thing ; how it contrived to imitate
almost all the other birds I had ever heard, and none to
greater perfection than the chirrup of my old and special
favourite, the sparrow! It so happened that for a
month or two during the summer-time, owing to the
scarcity of water, one part of the factory worked during
the night-time and the other during the daytime,

THOMAS EDWARD. 57

week and week about. This was a glorious time for me.
I rejoiced particularly in the night- work. We got out
at six in the morning, and, instead of going directly
home, I used to go up to the woods of Scotston and
Scot-stem Moor, scoured the country round them, and
then returned home by the auld brig." "Ah, these
were happy days. There were no taws (strap) to
fear, and no tyrannical dominie to lay them on. True,
the farm people did halloo at me at times, but I
generally showed them a clean pair of heels. The
gamekeepers, also, sometimes gave me chase, but I
managed to outstrip them; and although no nests were
to be got, there was always something to be found or
seen." ..." This was life, genuine life, for the young.
But, alas ! a sad change was about to come ; and it came
very soon."

After working for about two years at the factory, the
father thought that the time had arrived when his two
eldest sons should be apprenticed to some regular trade,
and he fixed upon that of shoemaking. He was forth-
with bound for six years to a shoemaker in the
Grallowgate, Aberdeen, where his wages were to be
eighteenpence per week, for the first year, and rising
sixpence a week afterwards. Cobbling and tippling
have for years gone together, and so it appeared to be
the case with Begg, the name of the man to whom
Edward was apprenticed. He was dissolute, irregular,
and quarrelsome in his habits, and when drink was in
him, not only wit, but " the milk of human kindness '
was out of him. He was in many respects a typical
representative of the kind of masters to whom boys

58 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

were apprenticed years ago, and the youth of to-day
have much to be thankful for, that a new species of
masters has originated who dare not practise cruelty,
and who must teach the trade to which the apprentice is
bound to him.

Edward very frequently would take with him to the
shop little boxes containing butterflies, or bird's eggs,
which he had found on his way to work, but Begg soon
got into a habit of rifling the lad's pockets of such things,
and pitched them into the street, boxing afterward
Edward's ears for being " such a fool as to care for such
varmin." Tom's pets were ruthlessly treated by Begg,
and this cruel treatment of the little things hurt
Edward a great deal more than the physical punishment
which he was constantly receiving.

One day Edward took three moles to the shop, and
these Begg killed at once, and afterwards knocked
down Edward with a last, and then seized him by the
neck and breast and threw him into the street. At
last he protested that he would not go any more to
work for such a cruel master.

Thoughts came into his head of going for a sailor,
and he eventually came to the conclusion to run away
from home. He had no money of his own, as all that
he had been able to earn had been given to his mother.
His mother went out for a longer time than usual one
day, and, finding sixpence, he bundled his few things
together and started off, with the idea of going to
Kettle, about a hundred miles distant from Aberdeen.
He walked forty miles on the first day, and slept at
night on some hay which he pulled from a rick. He

THOMAS EDWARD. 50

reached Kettle, but his uncle did not by any means
give him a warm reception. This rather chilled him,
and for the first time he began to think what his father
and mother would say of his disappearance. The next
day he started for home again, his uncle having sup-
plied him with eighteenpence to pay for food and the
crossing of the ferry at Dundee. He reached home
again without anything more serious happening than
a near chance of being tossed by a bull, and got nothing
worse than a severe lecture. He begged to be allowed
to go to sea, but this his father and mother would not
hear of, and so he resumed his shoemaking, but this
time under another master, who had a kind disposition,
and as Edward did not neglect his work during his
master's time, he was allowed to follow the bent of his
inclination, and of these opportunities he made the
most use.

His parents about this time had removed to another
house, and adjoining this was a piece of waste ground.
He now commenced what he termed his Wild Botani-
cal Grarden. Here he tried to raise the wild flowers
which he gathered during his rambles. Some of them
grew pretty well, but others of them withered and died.
His mother suggested the making of an ordinary gardes
of it, and, adopting this plan, he visited frequently a heap
where the gardeners, at several large houses outside
Aberdeen, were accustomed to throw away roots which
they did not want, and from this Edward obtained
sufficient to make a neat and well-stocked garden. 1 !<•
made a habit of never planting more than one flower,
so that in course of time he had quite a rich variety.

60 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

Time passed on pleasantly with him for a little time.
He improved his knowledge of reading by reading the
prints which were exhibited on the stalls which attended
the market, and spent his spare pennies in the purchas-
ing of the Penny Magazine and other periodicals. Trade
afterwards became very bad, and Aberdeen shared in
the universal depression which was then experienced.
Many people left England and Scotland and emigrated
to the United States, and Edward would have done
this if he could have raised money enough for the
purpose, and, failing this, he made a strong effort to
get out as a stowaway, but was discovered in his hiding-
place just as the vessel was about to sail, and so had to
give up the plan.

In 1831 he enlisted in the Aberdeenshire Militia, at
which time he was eighteen. One day the regiment to
which he belonged was out for drill on the sea-shore.
The afternoon was bright and warm, and there came
flying in the neighbourhood of where the men were
standing a butterfly. Edward caught sight of this,
and no sooner did he do so that off he started to catch
it, and flew in and out of the small sand-hills, making
energetic clutches at it as he ran along. "What a chase
he had ! and what a chase the corporal of the company
had too, to catch Edward; but he presently did so, and
laid hold of him roughly by the neck. Back he was
marched, and the corporal had instructions to lodge him
in the guard-house for breaking away from the ranks
during drill, as butterfly-catching was scarcely con-
sidered a part of military training. Two militiamen
walked in front of him and two behind, and he was

THOMAS EDWARD. 61

brought before the officer, who asked him : " Well, sir,
what have you to say about breaking the ranks during
drill, and running after a butterfly ? Are you subject
to fits of insanity ? ' To this Edward did not reply,
and the officer asked again : " What induced you to
leave the ranks and run after a harmless insect ? ' His
reply was : "I really do not know, unless it was from a
desire to possess the butterfly." He had never been
insubordinate before, and as some ladies who had
noticed the occurrence, interceded for the poor fellow,
he received nothing worse than a reprimand.

Edward, shortly afterwards, at the age of twenty,
moved to Banff, in which town, with only a short
period when he was in Aberdeen, he has resided the
remainder of his life, and where he continues to live
to-day. He had no love for his trade, shoemaking,
but it appeared the only trade by which he was likely
to earn a living. His bench was rarely ever free from
caterpillars or other insects, and from these old habits
of his his shopmates were just as much annoyed as had
been the children and masters of the schools of his
childhood. At the age of twenty-three he acquired
another passion, and that was for a servant at a farm-
house, and they had the courage to marry when
Edward's earnings averaged some nine-and- sixpence
per week, but in his wife he had found a kindly and
sympathetic companion, and Edward has acknowledged
in a very touching way how cheerfully his dear wife
bore up amidst their poverty and Edward's love of his
favourite pursuits. He had learned how to preserve
and stuff animals and insects, and his house — for In*

62 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

had taken a little cottage — was soon full of these
treasures. It was now that he began very seriously to
feel the disadvantage of being able to read and write
only with difficulty. Arithmetic was an unknown
subject to him. He had never up to this time read
a book on Natural History, so that all the knowledge of
the various insects and animals he had gathered was
his own discovering. He was looked upon by those
with whom he worked as queer and uncanny. Drink
was the pleasure of his shoj)mates, but he had no dis-
sipation of this kind to indulge in. He was of a
thoughtful and retiring disposition. His love of nature
intensified, and to use his own words : "I can never
succeed in describing my unbounded admiration of the
works of the Almighty ; not only the wonderful works
which we ourselves see upon earth, but those wondrous
and countless millions of orbs which roll, both near and
far, in the endless immensity of space, the Home of
Eternity ! Every living thing that moves or lives,
everything that grows, everything created or formed
by the hand or the will of the Omnipotent, has such
a fascinating charm for me, and sends such a thrill of
pleasure through my whole frame, that to describe my
feelings is utterly impossible."

At the age of twenty-four, and after he had been
one year married, Edward commenced in real earnest
to make a collection of natural history objects. His
apparatus was of the rudest description. Bottles, nets,
and boxes for his insects were all of his own adapting,
and such as he could make or procure without much
expense, as he had neither money nor time to waste.

THOMAS EDWARD. 63

Night after night, in the spring and summer-time,
after he had been working hard at his bench during
the day, he would snatch a hasty supper of cheese and
bread, and then he would start on his rambles, taking
with him, besides the things named above, an old rusty
gun, with the barrel tied to the stock with stout twine,
and spend the nights out of doors, resting often, during
the hours of darkness, under a favourite gravestone in
the Boyndie churchyard, near Banff. He was a perfect
conundrum to his neighbours. They could not bring
themselves to give him the poacher, but they were
mystified at his nightly excursions and odd habits.

In addition to making his miscellaneous collection,
he grew quite a capital taxidermist, and could produce
some good specimens of stuffed birds, rats, and other
animals which came in his way. One of the receptacles
in which he would place his " takings " was his hat,
and this used to be full on these nocturnal wanderings
of a very " olla podrida ' of insects, birds, and other
specimens of natural history. He could not, of course,
go out on these visits night after night without meeting
with some adventures, and these he very frequently met
with. He received many bites from weasels and rats,
and on one occasion he was very near being injured by
several badgers. One adventure with a pole-cat I may
mention. He was lying out of doors near to the ruined
castle of the Boyne, a favourite haunt of his, above five
miles west of Banff. He was awakened from his sleep
by a patting about his legs. He thought it was a rabbit
or a rat, and moved his legs sharply, and so thought he
would get rid of it. The animal would not, however,

64 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

go, and he gave a rapid dash with his hand, and there
was a shriek as it fell to the ground, and then he knew
at once that it was a pole-cat. On recovering itself it
flew at him furiously, and attempted to get at a water-
hen which he had in his hreast. The pole-cat screamed
and clawed at him, and Edward's grip did not appear
to be a very sure one, but he eventually gained the
mastery by making it swallow about an ounce of chloro-
form, a commodity which he always carried with him
on these excursions, and then he was able to get it down
on the ground and place his foot on its neck. He
says of this encounter that it was the most terrible that
he ever had with an animal of its class. His hands
were very much bitten and scratched, and for a long
time afterwards remained sore and inflamed ; but he
states that the pole-cat which he had captured was well
worth the struggle. It was a male which he had caught,
and he afterwards stuffed it as a companion to a female
which he had at home.

These nightly visits of his made him familiar with
the birds and animals which catch their prey in the
darkness, but, in addition to this, he learned much of
bird life.

He became anxious to form a natural history
collection, and he had many dreams of what might be
its ultimate usefulness to himself and to others. He
greatly felt the need of a friendly hand to guide him,
and to save him from having to struggle through many
difficulties which, had he been able to obtain books and
practical help, would have aided him materially, and
saved him much time and laborious work. He was

THOMAS EDWARD. 65

most assiduous in his labours. If lie wanted to procure
a particular bird or insect lie would walk miles, and
search patiently for days until he discovered that for
which he was looking. He fixed a number of traps in
all sorts of places, composed of dead birds, rats, rabbits,
hedgehogs, fish, crabs, or seaweed, and these he placed
in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners, and visited some
of them daily, others weekly and monthly. By dint of
his perseverance he had collected over nine hundred
specimens of insects, and these he had pinned down in
boxes of his own making, and placed numbers to them
which he had cut out of an old almanack. There were
twenty boxes in all, and these he had ready for glazing.
They had been deposited in a garret for safety, and
after he had obtained the glass he went up to the room
to get them, when, to his great astonishment, he
discovered that the box had been stripped entirely of
its contents. On looking at the others, all had been
served the same, except a wing here and a head there.
Rats or mice had evidently got at them. His wife
asked him what he was going to do next : " Weel,"
said he, " it's an awfu' disappointment, but I think the
best thing will be to set to work and fill them again."
This he did, although to collect these 916 insects he had
been four years engaged.

Sir Isaac Newton setting to work again after his
favourite dog "Diamond' had overturned a candle.
which had set fire to some papers upon which were
mathematical calculations, which had occupied him Bar
years, did not show a more noble spirit than did
Edward, who, without delay, began again collecting

Qft EMINENT NATURALISTS.

moths and other insects, and in about three years he
had replaced his lost number. He had now been some
eight years collecting, and during this time — 1845 — he
had preserved nearly 2,000 specimens of living creatures
found in the neighbourhood of Banff. About half the
number consisted of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes,
Crustacea, starfish, zoophytes, corals, sponges, and other
objects. In addition to these, he had also collected an
immense number of plants. His cases were entirely
his own making, and the papering of them inside,
painting outside, and glazing was also his work. His
collection filled no less than 300 cases, and every nook
and corner of his house was full of them.

It had long been the wish of his heart to leave the
shoe-making trade, and give his attention wholly to
natural history. He had a project of exhibiting his
collection, and this he did at a hiring fair in Banff in
1845. A great many country people visited the town
at this fair, and there was always at it a miscellaneous
collection of fat women and dwarfs, and other wonderful
things, and he thought that surely among all these
curiosities there would be many who would pay the
small entrance sum to see the contents of his cases. A
room in the Trades' Hall was taken, and it was
advertised as a "Collection of preserved animals, com-
prising quadrupeds, birds, fishes, insects, shells, eggs, and
other curiosities."

One of the local papers said of it, " that the collection
was the result of his own untiring efforts and ingenuity,
without aid, and under discouraging circumstances,
which few would have successfully encountered. . . .

THOMAS EDWARD. 67

Our young friends especially should visit the collection ;
it will both amuse and instruct them. They will learn
more from seeing them in half-an-hour, than from
reading about them in half-a-year."

His neighbours were greatly surprised, and some of
the better class enquired as to " what had made him a
naturalist ? ' : Edward says that " when this question was
first asked him he was completely dumbfoundered. I had
no notion that a naturalist could be made. What !
make a naturalist as you would make a tradesman ! I
could not believe that people became naturalists from
pecuniary motives. My answer to those who put the
question invariably was, and still is, I cannot tell. I
never knew of any external circumstance that had any-
thing to do with engendering in my mind the never-
ceasing love which I entertained for the universal works
of the Almighty ; so that the real cause must be looked
for elsewhere."

The exhibition was a success, and Edward was
greatly encouraged, and at once set to work collecting
for another exhibition, which must be larger and more
comprehensive than the first, but he decided that Banff
was scarcely the place for this, and he fixed upon
Aberdeen as being the city where he would be likely to
have most visitors. He was buoyed up with this great
project, which filled his thoughts night and day, and he
was most assiduous in adding to his collection every
specimen of interest which came in his way. He had
been successful at Banff, surely he would meet with far
greater encouragement in a large and well-populated
city like Aberdeen, with its university, its many

68 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

schools, and its reputed learning. It was natural that
he should feel very enthusiastic about this project, and
long before the time came for him to think of moving
his collection to the granite city, he had planned what
works on Natural History he would be able to buy
with the proceeds of his exhibition, and that he would
also be able to obtain a microscope for a more minute
study of some of his specimens. Aberdeen was to be
to him a veritable El Dorado, and no one can say that
this young man, who had in the spare moments saved
out of his labours as a shoemaker, should anticipate
that this venture of his would place him in such a
position that he would be able to devote the whole of
his time to the pursuit of the natural history studies
which had become a very necessity of his existence.
It was not that he had a soul above his shoe-soles, for
it is a very interesting fact that Edward was acknow-
ledged to be about the best workman which his
employer had, and was always entrusted with work to
which special attention was needed. His promises
with regard to the time that certain work were very
different from the majority of the promises of shoemakers
in general, for he could always be depended upon.

The British Isles provide very numerous examples
of young men who have struggled manfully and nobly,
toiling diligently in the honest, if humble, calling
which they have followed for a livelihood, yet given to
burning midnight oil in the acquiring of knowledge, or
following patiently a certain bent of study, overcoming
difficulties by which thousands around would have
been baffled and defeated. Among this great number

THOMAS EDWARD. 69

we may certainly include Thomas Edward, and I should
like to dwell on this portion of his life. When in
Aberdeen he fondly hoped and expected he would meet
with some appreciation of his collection, and enough
money to permit of his henceforward looking to natural
history to find bread for himself and family. To him
it was drawing near the Rubicon, and the future was
full of promise, for were not the Aberdonians about to
come in hundreds, and pay their money to see what it
had taken him years to collect ?

Edward had taken a shop in Union Street, which is
now one of the finest thoroughfares in Great Britain,
and on a Friday, in July, 1846, the six large carriers'
carts, containing his collection, and also the furniture
of their little cottage. His patient and helpful wife,
with their five children, accompanied the carts, and so
they in this way performed the journey to Aberdeen by
road, at which place they safely arrived.

He at once got them in order, and issued his hand-
bills and advertisements. One of the handbills stated
that " the objects comprising this collection have been
collected in the counties of Banff and Aberdeen, and
preserved by a single individual, and that individual a
journeyman shoemaker. They have been exhibited by
him in Banff, to the delight and admiration of every
visitor — all being surprised at the beauty, order, and
multitude of the various objects — some going so far as
to doubt the fact of the proprietor being a shoemaker,
saying that it was impossible for a person of that trade
being able to do anything like what they saw before
them.

70 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

" Thomas Edward takes the liberty of stating that
the collection is allowed by eminent naturalists to be
one of the greatest curiosities ever offered for public
inspection in this quarter, amounting, as it does, to
about two thousand objects ; and being the work of one
individual, who had to labour under every disadvantage,
having none to tell how or where to find the different
objects ; none to teach him how to preserve these objects
when found ; no sound of promised reward ringing in
his ears to urge him on his singular course ; no Mend
to accompany him in his nightly wanderings ; help
from none, but solely dependent on his own humble
abilities and limited resources."

Such was the appeal made to the Aberdeen public,
helped on by kindly notices in the local papers. The
prices of admission were low enough for all, being,
" Ladies and gentlemen, 6d. ; tradespeople, 3d. ; chil-
dren, half-price."

After all was ready for the crowd, which he fondly
thought would gather at the door, he looked around
his eight years' collection with a pardonable pride. He
thought he had reached the Rubicon and was just on the
threshold of better and more prosperous days. The
Aberdeen public little thought of how their sixpences
would have helped to cheer that worthy soul, but they
were very very chary of parting with them.

Sad to say, there were very few who came to see it.
Some of Edward's chief visitors, those who had stuffed
birds and animals to sell, or others who mistook him for
a dog doctor and wanted cures for pets of the canine
tribe. He was told by several professors of the Aber-

THOMAS EDWARD. 71

deen college that his collection was one of the finest
which they had ever seen ; but, Job's comforters as they
were, they generously informed him that " he was
several centimes too soon, as the people of Aberdeen
were not yet prepared for such an exhibition, especially
as it had been the work of a poor man."

True, he was a " poor man," but possessed a noble
heart and an indomitable perseverance. Poor fellow !
disappointment, bankrupt hopes, nun looked him in the
face. He had faith in himself, but he had fears that it
was as the University professor had said, — he was born
a century too soon. There were not a few of his visitors
who had the impertinence to doubt, and that in no choice
language to him, that the collection had really not been
got together in the way he would have people believe.

This he felt very keenly. A few of the people came
to see his exhibition who worked at the mills where
twenty years before he himself had been as a lad earn-
ing a pittance to aid his father and mother in providing
food for themselves and their bairns. He naturally
thought that the labouring class, of which he was one,
and among whom he had lived, would take some interest
in his exhibition ; but no, as the days of its being opened
increased in number, the attendance appeared to de-
crease. He advertised and distributed handbills in
thousands, but the result was still the same, although
he had reduced the price of admission to a penny for
the working classes.

The rent of the shop he had taken was falling due at
the end of the third week, and he was deeply in debt, a
feeling which chafed him into an agony of mind. Each

72 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

day only seemed to drive him deeper into the difficulty.
He had risked his all in the undertaking, and he could
see nothing but absolute ruin for him. Black despon-
dency seized him, and in the midst of his bewilderment
no wonder that his reason for the time being should
have been unhinged. Wife and five children dependent
on him, his situation to be lost unless he returned with-
out a day's delay, debt, and nothing to pay with, all
helped to bring on a state of feeling which would have
tried the strongest will. He went out with the intention
of not coming back again, and made his way to the sea-
shore. He had taken off his hat, coat and vest, and
remained looking into space with an utter blankness of
mind, until suddenly his eye caught sight of a flock of
birds, and among them one which was different from all
the rest. He waited until they rested on the sand, and
then off he started towards them. Each time they rose
and flew away off he started too, for his curiosity to
know something of the strange bird among the flock
was thoroughly aroused ; but secure it he could not, but
one thing he did secure, for to-day he is alive and
could tell the story of how his life was providentially
preserved by a little bird and his intense love of
nature.

It was hard to bring himself to the fact that his
collection must be sold, but go it must. Several gentle-
men spoke of its being preserved by one of the scientific
societies, but nobody was ready to advance the necessary
money, and eventually it was sold for twenty pounds
ten shillings for the use of a boy who never seems to
have made any use of it. His heart went with it, and,

THOMAS EDWARD. 73

broken in spirit and desolate in heart, he returned to
Banff. The walls of his cottage which, before he left
had been hid completely with his cases, now only pre-
sented a bare appearance, which chafed and depressed
him. Hunger, which is a hard master, left him no
time to grieve long over his lost collection and his
almost penniless condition, for the twenty pounds had
all been absorbed in paying his debt, an undertaking
which he gave himself no rest until it was accomplished.
So little had he left, that there was not sufficient to pay
the earner for the bringing of the wife and bairns back
to Banff, but the kindness of the carrier who had taken
them to Aberdeen helped them to overcome that diffi-
culty by taking them without charge.

His disappointment was keen. The cup of fortune
had been dashed from his lips just as he was about to
raise it to his lips, but, like all noble natures, he did not
give way to repining and quarrelling with his fate.
Without delay, he returned again to his shoemaker's
bench, and whacked the leather even more briskly than
ever he had done before.

The brave wife, who had cheered and stood by him
through all his cares, showed at this time what a true
helpmeet she was. The house became comfortable
again, and around his fireside, with the little ones
bearing his name and the brightness of his wife's face,
he soon resumed his usual manner. An autumn and
winter passed, but he did not do much to replace his
lost treasures, but immediately spring returned his old
habits came back upon him, and he could not, had he
tried, overcome the irrepressible desire to make another

74 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

collection. For nights together he would be away after
his day's work was over, and would stay out on the
moors and in the fields, ready again to commence his
searches with the first streak of dawn. His clothing
possessed wonderful receptacles for his boxes to contain
specimens which he found. His coat was all pockets,
both inside and out, and his waistcoat had been specially
made by his wife, also, with pockets in such places as
had never before been dreamed of, and even his hat had
been constructed for a similar purpose. It had a deep
crown, and just above the portion for his head there was
a partition for lodging specimens. He was perfectly
contented when he was out hunting in this way. Very
often, hungry and footsore, he would return home in
the morning, and as soon as he had finished his break-
fast off he would go to work.

One day he had wandered farther away than usual,
and in rather a new district to him. He was out on a
moor, and had been utterly unconscious that a storm
was approaching, and before he was aware it burst, and
there he was, on a wild moor, without a house or any
place of shelter in sight. He had his pockets full of
chip-boxes, which contained specimens in abundance of
ants, butterflies, moths, worms, and other things, for he
was out on a three days' excursion, it being a holiday
time, and there was no leaving his specimens behind
" until called for." The rain came on in torrents, and
he was soon drenched. He ran first along one path,
then in another, but no house was to be seen. It was a
perfect hurricane of rain, such as only the Swiss and the
Scotch mountains can provide. On he ran, until at last

THOMAS EDWARD. 75

he espied some smoke issuing out of a thatched roof,
and for this highland cottage, arriving suddenly, to the
consternation of two little girls who stood at the turf
fire, and dropped on the nearest chair, without for a few
minutes being able to speak. The mother was out, but
the girls said that he might remain, and he presently
began to see in what condition his cardboard boxes and
the inmates were.

The two girls evidently found something very amus-
ing about him, for they laughed away heartily, looking
at him as they did so. Then off they scampered to
fetch their mother, who was out some distance cutting
firewood. Presently she came with an axe in one hand
and a stout branch from a tree in the other, and looked
6ternly at Edward, in such a way that he was not quite
sure which she was going to use on him first. " "Will
ye' gang, ye varmin?': she kept repeating, Edward
protesting meanwhile that she was wrong ; but, poor
fellow, he very soon found out that she wasn't, for
crawling all about him were caterpillars, moths, and
butterflies, and other live-stock in a kalf-drowned
condition, but in such a way that he was literally all
alive. He strode rapidly away to an outhouse and
overhauled all his clothes, and then came back to thank
the woman — standing at a respectful distance, for she
would not let him come near her or enter her house
again — for the shelter which she had given him.

Edward had much cheap advice given him as soon as
his exhibition at Banff brought himself and his hobby
into notice. There is always more than enough of this
stale commodity to be had cheap, but practical help he

76 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

had none from his townsmen or others who had come
to know of his work. Some advised him to extend his
researches into Aberdeenshire, and others to contribute
specimens to general museums and so bring his name
into prominence, but publicity he knew well would never
feed and clothe his eight children. His bravest helper
was his wife, and her practical aid was worth a book
full of such prolific advice as was being constantly
tendered him. She worked at the uppers of the boots,
of which Edward placed on the soles, and she worked
too for others and so earned wages in this way ; but
with money so coming to her she very frequently
bought boxes for his insects or wood for his cases.

No wonder, then, that Dr. Smiles, in his book, should
pay the tenderest tribute to her memory. She possessed
the truest nobility of heart and soul, and never regretted
joining her lot with Edward, and commencing their
married life on eight shillings a week.

A friendly magistrate gave Edward a kind of pass
which enabled him to wander about through fields as
his fancy led him, with his gun and his pouches, with-
out being taken for a poacher ; and this was of consider-
able service to him in preventing disagreeable interviews
between himself and farmers, who could not understand
a man running about to pick up livestock as it came in
his way.

It was scarcely possible for him to wander far and
near in this way without meeting with adventures and
without, at times, serious risk of life and limb. He was
one day out among the precipitous rocks of the sea-coast,
and shot at a marten flying over his head. The bird

THOMAS EDWARD. / /

fell, but he could not make out where it had dropped
down. In searching for it he had to climb the cliff,
and in doing so missed his footing and fell down a
distance of some forty feet. His gun had preceded him
and had become wedged between two rocks, and he fell
on it, breaking it to pieces ; but it broke his fall and
probably saved his life. He fell into two clefts of the
rock, and the weight of his body and the force of the
fall made it impossible for him to get out by himself.
Two ploughmen, who had been watching him from a
distant field, came to his assistance. Had it not been
for them it would have gone very hard with Edward.
This accident cost him a fortnight's loss of work. No
bones were broken, but he was very sore, and had
sustained some severe contusions.

Nor was this the only occasion when his life was in
real danger of being sacrificed to his love of nature,
but this did not deter him from still going on in his
researches.

A Rev. Mr. Smith, Presbyterian minister in the
neighbourhood, was one of the warmest and best friends
that Edward ever had. He advised him to write down
on paper all that he knew or could learn about the
specimens which he acquired, and this, after a good deal
of persuasion, he did, and afterwards communicated to
a local paper short but most interesting sketches, some
of which displayed a quickness of perception and
a felicity of expression which was really most
remarkable, considering how little education he had
received. His description of birds and their habits
was most graphic. In the preparing of these papers

78 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

for press Mr. Smith gave him the most practical assist-
ance, taking the notes of Edward's observations, and,
at a later date, persnading him to let him send the
communications to the Zoologist, in which they after-
wards appeared. Did space permit, many of these
descriptions of birds would be of considerable interest ;
but I must refer the reader to the book of Dr. Smiles'
" Life of a Scotch Naturalist," who has, in this life
of Thomas Edward, given us one of his most charming
industrial biographies. This work of Dr. Smiles was
to him a labour of love, and it is from it that most of
the facts which I have quoted are collated. All who
desire a fuller account of this shoemaker naturalist
should read the book referred to, which has now been
published in a cheaper edition.

The closeness of observation, the accuracy of his
views respecting birds and bird life, were amazing to
those who came in contact with him. His patience was
astounding ; nothing ever seemed to give him the sense
of weariness and fatigue when he was on the search for
specimens — and that meant every time he was out of
doors. In a letter to his biographer he said, " In look-
ing over my printed articles you will find a great
number of notices of the habits and workings of various
species. I spent so much time in observation, that I
had little time to spare to write out the results, and
what I did write, did not seem to be much appreciated.
Perhaps this is not to be wondered at. It appears that
the compilers of works on natural history in this country
do not care for details of the habits of the animals they
treat of ; they rather glory in the abundance of technical

THOMAS EDWARD. 79

descriptions they can supply. These may seem scientific,
but they are at the same time very dry. In fact, natural
history is rendered detestable to general readers. We
want some writers of the Audubon and Wilson class to
render natural history accessible to the public at large."

Edward was perfectly right in this, and, had he only
received a complete education, there is no doubt but he
would have been one of those who would help materially
in expunging difficult words and phrases from such
books. It is, in fact, due to the lives of such men as
Edward that books have since been written of a simpler
and more popular character.

Another Presbyterian minister was also of consider-
able service to him. His house was always open to
Edward, and a friendship of the warmest character
existed between them, and continued until the time of
Mr. Boyd's death, in 1854. He interested himself
greatly on Edward's behalf, and not long before his
death he, in conjunction with some other gentlemen,
who were on a visit to his house, had a long notice
inserted in a Fraserburgh paper; portions ran as
follows : — " During the past month our district has
been visited by Mr. Thomas Edward, from Banff, a
naturalist of no mean attainments, and one who, we
doubt not, will soon bring himself into public notice,
both by his indefatigable researches into natural science,
and his valuable contributions to various scientific

periodicals We cordially wish Mr. Edward

every success in the various fields of research upon
which he has entered. It is but justice to a most
deserving person to draw attention to his praiseworthy

80 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

endeavours, in the midst of many difficulties, to perfect
his knowledge of natural history, and to recommend it
to all around him, especially the young. Happy would
it be, if our tradesmen were to take a leaf out of Mr.
Edward's book, and instead of wasting their time,
squandering their means, and embittering their existence
in the haunts of dissipation, they would sally forth in
these calm summer evenings to rural scenes and sylvan
solitudes, to woo nature in her mildest aspect, to learn
a lesson from the moth or the spider, to listen to the
hum of the bee or the song of birds, to mark the various
habits and instincts of animals, and thus to enrich their
minds with useful and entertaining knowledge."

The idea underlying this notice was to get the working
classes interested in natural history, and to arrange with
Edward for some lectures of a rudimentary character;
but Mr. Boyd's sudden death put an end to this, and
Edward grieved for him sorely, as a true friend gone
from his side.

Several friends interested themselves on his behalf.
He was willing to undertake any kind of honest work
which would bring him in a livelihood for his wife and
family ; but apparently there was nothing likely to prove
a permanency which would take him away from his
cobbler's bench. Even for his many articles in various
scientific periodicals he received no remuneration,
although some of them were of a valuable character.

irom many of these it would be easy to quote at
length, and there is in them much original and sugges-
tive information of fishes, Crustacea, zoophytes, mol-
luscs, fossils, and plants.

THOMAS EDWARD. 81

It was scarcely possible that so many nights spent
out of doors in all kinds of weather should not
have some serious effect on his health, and this now
gave way. A severe attack of rheumatic fever seized
him, and for four weeks, and for the greater part of this
time he was wandering about his insects and birds.
The doctor told him that if he wished to have his life
preserved, he would have to cease entirely from his
nightly excursions. His earnings had been so small
that he had been able to save only very little ; but, as on
previous occasions, his chief savings bank — the collection
of natural history — was the means by which he was
once again cleared from debt, and was scattered among
purchasers.

He had been obliged to take very seriously to heart
what the doctor had said, and although he was. for-
bidden to go out and spend nights in the open air, he
was determined not to give up his studies immediately
his strength returned, and he was able to follow his
daily employment. In his spare time, which he always
made for nature, he began to devote himself to the
natural history of the sea-shore, and in this department
of study he was very successful in discovering a number
of new specimens not previously known.

Several of his daughters were exceedingly useful to
him in this work, for they woidd go among the fisher-
men as they brought their night's catch to market,
and obtain the rubbish out of their nets, for which they
did not care. This so-called rubbish he obtained some
very valuable specimens of Crustacea. Both he and his
family soon became well known to the fishermen, and

82 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

he was helped greatly by several of tliem. On one
occasion lie wrote as follows to the local paper, which
now regularly printed his notes on the specimens which
came in his way : "It is quite astonishing what amaz-
ing numbers of minute creatures are at times to be
foimd amongst the refuse of only one boat's lines.
.... The ocean is, as it were, one vast and bound-
less expanse of life, and the inhabitants thereof about
as numberless as the sands by the sea-shore. I have
myself picked out of a net nine distinct species of shells,
three different kinds of starfish, and five different sorts
of zoophytes, besides worms, and a number of other
parasitical animals."

It is impossible for me to follow up his studies of sea
life in all its rich variety of forms. Friends at a distance
began to lend him books, other naturalists named his
specimens for him through the medium of the post, and
one scientific gentleman sent him a microscope. Several
again interested themselves in trying to procure for him
work more congenial to his tastes, but these efforts,
singularly and unfortunately, did not lead to the desired
result. True, just about this time he became keeper of
the Scientific Society's Museum at Banff, at a salary of
forty- two shillings per annum, and all through his
career the Banff public do not seem to have realized what
sort of a man they had amongst them. It appears to
have been the old story of a prophet having no honour
in his own country. The scientific men of the district
found it hard to swallow Edward's lapstone and his
growing reputation as a naturalist. Gret free, however,
from his bench, he could not, and he has patiently and

THOMAS EDWARD. 83

submissively worked on at it up to old age, for to-day he
is living and is at last honoured by his fellow-townsmen.

He corresponded with some of the most eminent scien-
tists of the day, and many a naturalist who has added to
our English literature on these important subjects, owes
much to specimens which have been discovered by
Edward, and especially to the information which he
has been able to give of animal life.

His family reached eleven children, but although
with his quiver full, he seems to have been greatly
blessed, for all his children have grown up to love and
to help the father, who has accomplished so much in the
way of natural science, although so little of what the
world often very erroneously counts success.

Edward was particularly enthusiastic in his discoveries
amongst zoophytes, molluscs, and fishes. These have
for many years now occupied his attention. And in
this department of study he was successful in rediscover-
ing some specimens which had been completely lost to
sight for nearly sixty years. At first so rare and un-
known were some of his specimens, that there was a
difficulty in naming them; but in this respect he was
greatly aided by other naturalists, for there is a wonder-
ful fraternity of feeling among lovers of nature, and
there is often very much interchange of pleasant com-
munication among them.

It was only natural that after all his correspondence
with eminent naturalists, and the numerous specimens
with which he had provided them, that he should receive
some acknowledgment, and in 18G6, he was elected as
an Associate of the Linnoean Society, probably the

84 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

highest honour that could be conferred upon him. A
diploma of the Glasgow Natural History Society was
also granted him. It is a stigma on his townsmen that
they allowed his hiunhle but honest trade to stand
between him and their regard for him. It would have
been the greatest joy of his life to have been able to
leave his bench and devote his remaining years entirely
to natural history studies ; but in 1877, and indeed after-
wards, he was working away mending and making boots
with as much zeal as he had shown in his young life.

His earnings have during all his life been but small ;
and in fact it may be said that all over Scotland wages
do not reach the rates which are usually paid south
of Tweed, for the reason I suppose that labour is more
plentiful and few outlets for it. Notwithstanding the
smallness of his earnings, he has always been able to
save a little out of them, and this has always been
spent in the pursuit of his natural history proclivities.
It is an old but very true saying that true happiness
lies not in the abundance, but in the fewness of a man's
wants, and so the Scotch are in many respects greatly
to be admired for their thrift, and the ease with which
they adapt themselves to living on the narrowest pos-
sible income.

With all the educational privileges which the rising
generation of this country enjoy, there is one most
important principle which needs to be taught and
learned over and over again, and that is, the dignity
which attaches to all honest labour, no matter how low
in the social grade the species of toil may be.

While Edward has naturally felt on many occasions

THOMAS EDWARD. 85

the wish that some employment congenial to his tastes
might be provided for him, he has never, according to
his own report, experienced any feeling of pride that
he was above his awl and his lapstone; nay, rather on
the contrary, the more he has advanced in his studies
the better has his work been turned out as a shoemaker.

His sobriety has always been with him a strong
point. While some of his fellow- workmen have idled
their time and spent their earnings in drink, he has
quietly and perseveringly followed his studies, achieving
a success of greater practical worth than thousands of
men who have had every facility for early education,
followed by a university career.

The true value of natural history studies is well
represented by Thomas Edward, and it is for this
purpose that I have included his name in these sketches.
Possessing no advantages of an early education ; rarely,
if ever, free from the anxieties which inevitably sur-
round struggling circumstances, he has laboured on
through every variety of trouble, but never relaxing,
from Ins earliest years, his love for nature, which had
become part of himself.

Such lives as his show the truest nobility of soul.
In all his studies he has never lost sight of the great
Author of the universe ; and all natural history
studies, unless they tend to this, must be very empty
and unsatisfying in their results if they do not lead
to an unquenchable admiration for the Creator of all
things. Nay, the rather a mind imbued with these
studies soon learns to stand in amazement at the
wonderful forces displayed, yet the absolute perfection

86 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

of law and order. This awe becomes worship in itself,
not from a fear of majesty and might, but from the
feeling that an allwise Creator has indeed " ordered
all things well."

In Edward's old age there may indeed be to him
the consolation and assurance that his life and labours
will be a source of strength to thousands who will come
after him. He may have been born before his time,
and, probably, were he thirty years younger, success
in a worldly point of view would be his reward. The
pioneer, however, must ever go before and perform the
drudgery of preparing the way for others; and this is
exactly what he has done, making the path easier,
aiding most materially, with his specimens and his
notes, those whose names have been more to the front,
and who, in many cases, have reaped the honour which
belonged to Edward.

I have already referred to Edward's wife and family.
She, whose lot has been one with his, has cheered and
bravely supported with an affectionate sympathy, which
must have all through his married life been an un-
ceasing comfort to him. His troop of girls have all
been naturalists, and it could scarcely be otherwise,
considering that every available part of their house has
afforded space for his cases. They have also aided to
maintain the household, and Edward owes much to
the love which has lightened toil in his household.

As he nears the end of this life's journey, to enter
into a more perfect rest, and maybe — who knows ? —
pursue his favourite studies in the great hereafter, we
send to him, in his seventieth year, a warm and genuine

THOMAS EDWARD. 87

greeting, and with the wish, that around his latter
years there may be much joy and a quiet, restful peace
of mind.

I had recently a letter from Mr. Edward, and con-
sidering his age, and all through which he has gone, he
writes a very firm and legible hand. He forwarded me
with the letter, a copy of an address to farm servants,
delivered by him in 1881. This address is full of sound
advice, and I should like to give it in full, did space
permit; but I can only give a short portion. He say-:

"But your reading. Select good books together with
history, travel, works on science and art, and all such
like, biographies, and lives of eminent individuals.
Peruse the last often and attentively, study the charac-
ters and traits of the various persons mentioned well
and leisurely. Take lessons from, and imitate the best,
that you may have a chance of becoming men. Surely
it is for your own interests then that you join one or
other of these institutions, and assist the promoters and
your fellow-workmen all that lies in your power. I
have heard it said by some of your own class that you
have no means, nor any time for anything of the sort.
Oh, no ! Ye hae nae bawbees tae spare that wye, yer
sma' wages winna afford it, an' yer maisters needs a' yer
time. Well, that looks plausible certainly. But what
is the real fact? Listen, and if I am wrong, stop me.

" Have not many of you, I shall not say all, plenty
of money to squander, which you do willingly, and
with a lavish hand, when you like? Yes, when you
like, and take time to do it too, whether it be your
master's or not. But on what is this money, this hard-

88 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

wrought for bawbees, and time spent ? Shall I tell ?
Not on that which will either enlighten, elevate, nor
yet in any way help to better your condition, No.
But on that which rather tends to make you inebriates,
and may lead you to — to what ? Here I must pause,
for who could take upon him to say what the end
might be ? The very thought makes me shudder.
Beware then how you spend your money, and the
precious moments you waste in doing so. Be not
offended, I beseech you, at my seeming earnestness and
pleadings ; I wish none of you any harm, but rather
good. I would be the same to all who waste their time
and substance so, and who indulge in that doubly
accursed thing — drink and lewd living.

" I will now advert a little to your time. Time
wasted is time lost. Never forget that. Also that,
once gone, it can never be recalled by you, by no one.
No time, no means to get knowledge ! No will, no
wish, to regenerate yourselves and better your condition !
I do not, I declare, understand you. Had you said, No
inclination, I might have managed that. Bethink
yourselves, my friends, and get wisdom, at whatever
cost or sacrifice.

" I am well aware that you have much to contend
against, and many privations to bear with ; but you are
not alone in that. Others have the same, and perhaps
worse. Have a mind to do, and do it and all obstacles
will fly. That's the road to success and renown.
Blow the midges out of your path. It can be, and has
been done, as I have already told you, by some fully as
badly off in every respect as you are, or can be. Even

THOMAS EDWARD. 89

within my narrow circle of acquaintance, and it is
surely narrow enough, I knew one who was untutored
as any of you, had as little money as you could have,
wrought longer horns than any farm servant ever did,
save in harvest, reared a family perhaps as big as any
have here or about the country-side, having ten
daughters, and each of these lasses has a brother ; yet
that man found time and means, unaided, mark you,
and unencouraged, to do that which has made his name
familiar and respected in every quarter of the habitable
globe. More. He can now jingle a shilling in his
pouch, whereas before, if it did ever see a coin at all, it
was simply a bawbee awhile on Sabbath. This is no
fabrication — a sensational hitch as it were. I am in a
position to prove every word I have said. This, then,
is still farther encouragement to you and all like you,
whether of the country or the town. Have the will,
and take no heed for the rest. Strive after knowledge,
and diligently seek that wisdom which is from above.
This obtained, everything would be changed to you,
would wear a newer aspect. You would be changed
yourselves, and in time would feel and see things
differently. You would have pleasure and enjoyments
you at present have no idea of — your very lives, as a
natural consequence, would be sweeter."

He counts among his proudest possessions a letter
sent to him by Lord Beaconsfield, announcing a pension
of 50/. from the Queen. It was written by the late
Premier's own hand, and bore his signature —
" Beaconsfield." This he has had framed with another
picture — a cartoon from Punch, of which a reduced

90 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

sketch is given on page 92. The description of it, as
given in that paper, will be interesting. " ' Thomas
Edward, shoemaker and naturalist,' " and this greatly
amused him, at the fun made at his expense. " A rale
guid pictur'," he says of it.

" Help yourself ! " is a good rule, and a capital text,
on which Mr. Smiles, some time ago, preached a
sermon by examples, with the title of "Self -Help."
The moral of this sermon is summed in the old proverb,
" Grod helps those who help themselves,' ' for there
indeed lies the strength of " Self-help " — it is Grod's
help. And now Mr. Smiles has preached another
sermon on the same text, called " The Life of a Scotch
Naturalist." It is the wonderful true story of a won-
derful true man — Thomas Edward, Associate of the
Linnsean Society, and souter in Banff ; a story to bring
tears into the eyes, and to fill the heart with sadness
and gladness : a story to make those who read it better,
humbler, and gentler, and, above all, more thankful to
the great Father of all, who can so mysteriously teach
and guide, strengthen and lead up one of the humblest
of His children, from eleven years of age till sixty-three
an earner of distressful bread at a cobbler's stool, with
an average wage of nine shillings a- week.

Thomas Edward has lived two lives. There was first
the humble life of the hardly-brought-up son of a poor
weaver ; scholar, now and then, for brief spells, of
brutal dominies ; next apprentice of a drunken ruffian ;
then toiling bread-winner for a brave and true wife,
and a well-reared family of eleven children. This was
the man who helped himself.

THOMAS EDWARD. f»l

But side by side with this life he was living another
— of communion with the wonderful works of God, who
took upon himself this part of his teaching, instead of
the dominie with his taws and cane; binding him
apprentice to nature, instead of to drunken Charley
Begg, in the Grallowgate ; and after his days of sordid
stooping over uppers and twitching at waxed-ends,
giving him nights of wonderful intercourse with all
living things; appointing him "the beasties " for
books, and the silent hours of darkness for his school-
time ; and holes in dykes, or bields under stone walls,
or bits of crumbling ruin, for his schoolrooms. This
was the man helped of Grod.

If you want to know how Thomas Edward lived
those two lives side by side, helping himself manfully
under the heavy burdens of a poor man among poor
men, and letting Grod help him wonderfully, in gather-
ing wide and rare knowledge of plants and beasts,
birds, and creeping things, fishes, and crabs, starfishes,
and molluscs, till he was able to add new chapters to
the great book of natural science, and to teach teachers,
and win honour from renowned naturalists, and was, at
length, made an Associate of the most famous of their
societies, you will find the story told fully and feelingly
in Mr. Smiles' "Life of a Scotch Naturalist," published
by John Murray.

And you will read, too, how close work at the
cobbler's stool by day, and wandering and watching
and lying out by night, wrestlings with winter's winds
and frosts, drenchings with rain, wettings from se;ts,
tumbles from cliffs, with long fastings, and spare fere,

92

EMINENT NATURALISTS.

at best, of oatmeal cakes and water, played havoc with
a strong body, so that at sixty-three, Thomas Edward
is an old and crippled man.

In the same book is told the touching story of this
man's loneliness and disappointments : how, under the
pinch of hard times, he had, again and again, to sell

the collections he had so laboriously made, which he
straightway set to making over again, like Robert
Bruce' s spider ; and how the prophet, honoured as he
was by wise and famous men far away, was not
honoured in his own country — Banff bailies, and Banff

THOMAS EDWARD. 93

bodies, and Banff sonls, being too high — or low — to see
the poor souter, bowed over his work, and so lower
still.

But you will not read in the book — for that came
after it was written — how the Queen and Lord
Beaconsfield, having read the story of Thomas Edward's
life, were moved by a common thought to put Thomas
Edward on the Pension List for a modest fifty pounds
a year, so that for the rest of his life he may give
himself wholly to the reading of Grod's Book of
Creation, without being a burden to the children who
have been true and helpful stays to him thus far. For
among Thomas Edward's other good gifts from Grod, is
a good and wise wife, and they have bred good bairns.
And so Punch takes leave of Thomas Edward — in
harbour at last; and, lifting his hat, and holding out
his hand to this stout-hearted and rarely-endowed man,
craves leave — as the highest honour should come the
latest — to offer this his tribute of respect after Prime
Minister and Queen.

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ.

oris Agassiz, by which name he was
everywhere known, was born at
Mottier, in the canton of Frieberg,
on May 28, 1807. He belonged to
an old French Protestant family
who had been compelled to quit
their native country by the revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes, whence
they took refuge in the Pays de
Yaud. His father was a Protestant
pastor, and for six generations his lineal ancestors had
been clergymen. On the mother's as well as on the
father's side, Agassiz was richly endowed with a vigor-
ous mind and active disposition.

The mother superintended the education of her boy
Louis until he reached the age of eleven, when he was
sent with his younger brothers to the gymnasium at
Biel, a small town in the canton of Bern, where
he was mainly occupied with the study of ancient and
modern languages, the acquaintance with which proved

94

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 95

of important service to him in his later biological
investigations. His play-hours he devoted to fishing
and the collecting of insects. Thus early did his
leaning towards ichthyological researches manifest
itself, and his knowledge of the habits of fish often
astonished even experienced fishermen.

His father was transferred from Mottier to the little
town of Orbe at the foot of the Jura. Here, during
the vacations, young Agassiz became intimate with a
young clergyman named Fivaz, who first introduced
him to the study of natural history, and especially
botany.

He remained at Biel for some few years, and after-
wards entered the Academy of Lausanne, on the shores
of Lake Greneva, and, in 1824, betook himself to Zurich
to study medicine ; for he was obliged to look forward
to a time when his knowledge would be his only means
of livelihood.

After remaining two years at Zurich he went to
Heidelberg, where he continued his medical studies at
the University, devoting himself chiefly to anatomy
and physiology under the noted Tiedmann, and botany
and zoology under Bischoff and Leuckhart. In the
autumn of 1827 he entered the University of Munich,
which had recently been reorganized. Among the
eminent men assembled there, Agassiz formed intimate
friendships.

He studied the organization of plants and their
geographical distribution with Martius. Dollinger, the
great master in physiology and embryology, soon
recognized the high talent of the young Swiss, and

96 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

ripened in him a long cherished plan of devoting him-
self to zoology in the widest sense of the term. He
was intimate with Wagler ; and under Oken — in some
respects the most remarkable zoologist that Germany
has produced — he studied his curious classification of
the animal kingdom. With Fuchs he studied mine-
ralogy ; and for four successive years he attended all
the philosophical lectures of Schelling.

His fellow-students remember vividly the remark-
able appearance of Agassiz at that period ; his
active and powerful physique, the intellectual
beauty of his face, his brilliant eye, and hearty
laugh. Although a laborious and devoted scholar,
he found time for athletic sports; and, as leading
swordsman of the University, was elected president
of the Swiss Club, the " Helvetia."

At this the beginning of his scientific life, the
bent of his mind towards a combination of
natural history with metaphysics was already
marked. His studies under Schelling and Oken all
pointed in this direction, and the interest he took
in both conclusively proved that the essential
character of his intellect was the same in youth as
in age.

An irresistible passion, an intense longing to tear
from nature the secret of life, had now complete
possession of Agassiz, and was destined not to lead,
but to drive him during the remainder of his exist-
ence. The surroundings were, it is true, favourable,
but it was because he sought them, and had they
not been favourable, he would have sought them

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 97

elsewhere. Of this period of his life he afterward
wrote : " Our professors were themselves original
investigators, daily contributing to the sum of
human knowledge. They were not only our teachers
but our friends. The best spirit prevailed among
professors and students. We were often companions
of their walks, often present at their discussions,
and when we met for conversation, or to give
lectures among ourselves, as we constantly did, our
professors were often among our listeners, cheering
and stimulating us in all our efforts after inde-
pendent research."

It was in Munich that young Agassiz, who
occupied a room in Dollinger's house, soon gathered
around him a circle of young and talented students,
to talk over and discuss matters of scientific interest.
His room was the meeting-place of this club, which
soon assumed the title of the Little Academy and
of which Agassiz acted as president. Before this
society did Michaelis lay the results of his researches
in the Adriatic Seas ; Born exhibited his beautiful
preparations of the anatomy of the lamprey ;
Eudolphi lectured to the students on the Bavarian
Alps and the coasts of the Baltic; and Schimper
and Braun here first expounded the laws of the
phyllotaxis. Dollinger himself did not disdain to
initiate his disciples and friends of this Little Acad-
emy in his newest discoveries and ideas, ere he
made them known to the scientific world, and here
he taught them the use of the microscope in
embryological research.

H

98 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

When Don Pedro of Brazil married an Austrian
princess, the Austrian and Bavarian governments
availed themselves of the opportunity of sending to
that country a scientific exploring expedition. The
naturalists who accompanied it were Martins, Spix,
Natterer, and Pohl. Agassiz, still a student, had
already published a few special papers. On the
return of the scientific corps Martius occupied himself
with the publication of his great work on Brazil.
The zoological portion was intrusted to Spix, but he
had not completed it at the time of his death.
Martius at once selected young Agassiz to elaborate
the ichthyological department, upon which very little
had been done, and the manner in which he accom-
plished the task placed him at once in the foremost
rank of naturalists. This work was published in
Latin at Munich in the year 1829, and was dedi-
cated to Cuvier. These studies and labours diverted
him from the profession of medicine, to which he
had been destined by his parents. The allowance he
had hitherto received from his father, on which,
moderate as it was, he had not only subsisted, but
had employed a distinguished young artist, Dinkel.
was now withdrawn.

Agassiz now applied to Cotta the publisher, who
struck by the value of the materials the former
had collected for a " Natural History of the Fresh-
Water Fishes of Europe," and no doubt impressed
with the genius of the young naturalist, enabled him
by a timely supply of funds to complete the work.
This was his second great undertaking.

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 99

About this time he presented himself as a candidate
for the degree of doctor of philosophy, which lie took
at Erlangen, after passing a very severe examination
with distinction. In the same year he took al Munich
the degree of doctor of medicine, on which occasion
he maintained the superiority of woman in a Latin
dissertation upon the thesis, Femina humana superior
mart.

It was at this time that he began his investigations
on fossil fishes. The immediate occasion of this step
was a short notice by Professor Rudolph Wagner on
the fossils of the Munich Museum, in which he
praised the number and beauty of the unnoticed
fossil fishes. Agassiz immediately applied to Professor
Fuchs, who had the care of the paheontological
collection, for permission to investigate the ichthy-
olites in detail. Professors AVagler and Schubert
placed freely at his disposal the collection of recent
fishes and their skeletons, and Dollinger, Oken, and
Martius in various ways encouraged him in this difficult
undertaking. To this great work he devoted seven
years of study before beginning the publication.
This was continued through ten years, and was
brought to a close in 1844.

In the course of his preparation for this work
Agassiz visited the principal museums of Europe,
accompanied by a skilful artist ; and so great was the
interest felt universally in these researches, and the
confidence which the author inspired, that he w;is allowed
to take with him for examination and comparison
the most valuable specimens of more than eighty public

100 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

and private museums, some of which he was permitted
to retain from five to ten years.

He came to London with letters of introduction to
Sir Roderick Murchison.

" You have been studying nature," said the great
man. " What have you learned ? "

Agassiz was of a timid nature and the opposite of
egotistical, and after a pause said,

" I think I know a little about fishes."

" Very well. There will be a meeting of the
Royal Society to-night. I will take you with me
there."

Towards the close of the meeting that night he said :
" I have a young friend here from Switzerland who
thinks he knows something about fishes ; how much
I have a fancy to try. There is under this cloth a
perfect skeleton of a fish which existed long before
man." He then gave some particulars as to where it
was found, and afterwards said to Agassiz,

"Can you sketch for me on the blackboard your
idea of this fish?"

Agassiz took up the chalk, hesitated a moment, and
then rapidly sketched a fish. Sir Roderick held up the
specimen, and it was found that the drawing was correct
in every bone and line, and there was a burst of
applause.

Agassiz said that that was the proudest moment of
his life.

In 1830 he went to Vienna where he stayed a year,
attending at the hospitals, and studying in the Imperial
Museum the splendid collection of sturgeons of the

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH A.GASSIZ. 101

Danube region, as well as the fossil fishes of Monte
Balca. Moreover, he was so interested in the cyprinoids
of the Danube, which were already partly known to
him from those of the Isar, that he concluded a work
on the Fresh-Water Fishes of Central Europe. On
account however, of the Revolution of July, 1830, this
work was not published.

The years 1831 and 1832 Agassiz spent in France,
and in Paris had much pleasant intercourse with
Cuvier and Alex, von Humboldt. Cuvier was then
giving a course of lectures on the history of natural
science, and combated with all the power of his science
and his detailed knowledge of the organic structure of
the whole animal world, the development theory of
Greoffroy, based on the variability of species, which the
latter defended in the sittings of the French Academy.
From this time Agassiz adhered to Cuvier' s ideas
on the classification of the animal kingdom, and on
creation catastrophes especially, and, with but little
modification, defended them in his teachings and
writings to the close of his life.

The drawings of Agassiz so delighted Cuvier — who
had just commenced his work on fishes — that he offered
to relinquish to the young man all the materials lie had
himself collected, and from that time to his death he
cherished a warm friendship for the Swiss naturalist,
and received him in his family on the most intimate
terms.

In Hiunboldt, again, Agassiz found an attached and
powerful patron, whose support at a later time essen-
tially facilitated the publication of many of his costly

102 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

works, and to whose recommendation he in part owed
the brilliant reception he met with in America.

With his residence in Paris the student life of
Agassiz may be said to have ended. He was about
to begin a profession which was one day to become
an engrossing one, and one never to be relinquished —
the profession of a teacher. In 1832 he applied to
M. Louis Coulon to obtain for him a position as
professor of natural history in the Gymnasium of
Neufchatel. No such chair then existed ; but M.
Coulon raised monej^ enough to guarantee for three
years a salary of 2,000 francs, and the new professor
was duly installed, already planning the best way
of laying out so considerable an annual sum as £80.
He found no museum there, and for lack of a lecture-
room was obliged to give his course in a hall of the
town-house. But this ill-provided teacher soon brought
his branch to overshadow all others in the Gymnasium.
From all parts of Switzerland came young and talented
pupils and friends of nature thither and gathered
round Agassiz, who understood how to inspire them
with his great ideas.

He sent for the specimens he had amassed in Ger-
many, and with ceaseless activity added fresh ones, until
a tolerable collection was ready for display and study.
Then, with the confidence of a man having abundant
resources in money and power, he proceeded to surround
himself with the appliances of a great scientific centre,
and to enter on a series of original investigations which
might well have taxed the powers of three able men.

He had constantly employed two artists, "Weber and

LOl IS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. L03

Dinkel, and a painter, Jacques Burckhardt, who had
been his fellow- student at Munich, and who remained
his life-long companion. Stahl, since noted as the Lest
modeller at the Jardin des Plant es, was then em-
ployed at Neufchatel. Hercule Nicolet, summoned from
Paris, was persuaded to set up, in this new home of
science, a large lithographic establishment, where were
published the last plates of the " Poissons Fossiles";
those of the " Poissons d'Eau Douce " ; of the em-
bryology of Coregonus ; of the works on the Glaciers ;
and of the Echinoderms.

The " Little Academy ' of Munich now took on
a new shape, and reappeared as La Societe des Sciences
Naturelles de Neufchatel. Its first meeting was in
December, 1832, when Louis Coulon was chosen Pre-
sident, and Louis Agassiz Secretary of the section of
Natural History.

The next fourteen years, during which he held the
chair in Neufchatel, were especially his years of research
and publication ; and it is hardly conceivable that one
man, even with able assistants, could within that period
have done such an enormous amount of work. Thus
far his attention had been directed chiefly to the class
of fishes in which Martius had interested him. Their
study had led him into paleontology, because of the
great quantity of fossil species which had hitherto been
the despair of ichthyologists. Fishes whose skeleton.^
were soft and which had thick muscles, were so crushed
and distorted as to be unrecognizable, and the viscera
were almost never to be distinguished. In the course
of an exhaustive study of their anatomy, Agassi/

104 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

discovered that the scales of fishes correspond by four
kinds of structures to f our grand natural divisions, which
he called Granoids, Placoids, Cycloids, and Ctenoids.
With this basis, and aided by an intimate knowledge
of the skeleton, he was enabled to tabulate all the
known fossil species. These formed his gigantic work
published as "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles," the
publication of which at Neufchatel extended over ten
years. It formed five quarto volumes, with 311 folio
plates. Eighty of the greatest museums of Europe
had furnished the materials for it, and the number
of described species amounted to 1,700 in about 20,000
examples. This is, undoubtedly, the greatest work of
Agassiz, and forms, with Cuvier's and Valenciennes'
" Histoire Naturelle des Poissons," and Johann Miiller's
Treatises, the foundation of our present knowledge of
fishes, while it does not confine itself to the region of
ichthyolites, but extends over the entire wide field of
the anatomy and classification of fishes, essentially
modifying the latter. Agassiz considered, and with
justice, that the separation of the ganoids from the
other fishes into the rank of a special order was the
greatest step towards progress for which science was
indebted to him, and on the basis of the comparison
of the fossil fishes of formations with living forms,
he enunciated several generally valid laws, which have
had an important bearing on the development theory
of the whole organic world.

The preparation of this work was laborious in the
extreme. Agassiz was obliged to travel with an artist,
in order to examine and figure the specimens which

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 105

could not be sent to Neufchatel. The expense, too, waa
far beyond his slender means, so that, despite the
aid obtained through Huniboldt and other warm
friends, he incurred heavy debts which hamper* <1
him for many years. He was, however, a man
who counted neither money, nor time, nor labour,
when knowledge was in the balance, and he hesitated
not to enter on new and intricate investigations in
the midst of his original work.

Being greatly interested in the subject, he found
time to devote to the study of living fishes. Thus
may be mentioned his treatise on the cyprinoids,
published in 1834 ; the great work brought out in
conjunction with Carl Yogt between 1839 and 1845,
on the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe. In 1842
he brought out his important " Nomenclator Zoologi-
cus," the result of many years' gatherings, and which
contained an alphabetical arrangement of the specific
names of the entire animal kingdom, their etymology,
information as to the authors who had proposed these
names, as well as the year of their appearance. The
" Nomenclator " found a magnificent conclusion in the
" Bibliographic Grenerale d'Histoire Naturelle," printed
at the cost of the Bay Society.

Such was the mental capacity of Agassiz, not
yet thirty years of age, and such his endurance of
continuous labour, that these numerous threads of
research, instead of producing a hopeless tangle in
his mind, seemed each to serve as a separate clue to
the truth of nature.

While he, no doubt, exercised a considerable influ-

106

EMINENT NATURALISTS.

ence on geology by means of his palaeontological
researches, still it is as a glacialist that the name of
Agassiz will always be prominently associated with
that science. Venetz's, Schimper's, and especially

View of the Jungfrau.

Charpentier's observations and theories on the greater
extension of glaciers and their relations to erratic
blocks attracted the attention of the young naturalist
in 1836 to the glacial phenomena of Switzerland.
Charpentier's theories on the former extension of

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH A.6ASSIZ. 107

glaciers and other points especially interested Agassiz,
who gave himself with his peculiar energy and
fertility of idea to the study of the subject. Willi
Gyot, Desor, Studer, and other young friends, did
he during several years visit most of the glaciers of
Switzerland and examine them in their entire extent,
from their origin to their lowest margins. In 1841
the ascent of the Jungfrau was undertaken. In the
middle of the Aar glacier, at a height of 8,000
feet above the sea, twelve miles from any human
habitation, protected by a huge block, a station was
erected, which latterly obtained a European celebrity
under the name of "Hotel des Neufchatelois." Here
for fully eight years were researches carried out on
the origin of glaciers, the forward and backward
oscillations, the structure and thickness of the ice as
well as its formation, the origin of moraines, etc.
In 1840 appeared Agassiz's first great work, "Etudes
sur les Glaciers," in which he throroughly discussed
the chief phenomena of glaciers, and developed his
views on their general extension. In a second work,
" Systeme Glacial," he gave a satisfactory account of
the observations made in the years 1841-45, especially
on the progress of glaciers in various years and under
the influence of conditions of temperature. The
adoption of a special glacial period was the final
result of Agassiz's research among the glaciers of
Switzerland, as well as those of Scotland and Wales.
The immense importance of this theory, both in
geology and biology, was soon recognized, and its
discussion has engaged the earnest attention of the

108 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

ablest men in all departments of science. He proved
unmistakably that in the position of the visible parts
of the earth as they stand, water had been an agent
in a form before scarcely thought of and to an extent
before not apprehended. He showed that in the form
of vast rivers of ice it had modified the terrestrial
surface most materially in places where the climate
no longer permits of such action. The discoveries of
Agassiz also gave an explanation for the existence
of boulders or large water-worn stones, in positions
far above the reach, nowadays, of the agencies to
which they must have been at one time subjected.

From 1846 the biography of Agassiz belongs to
the natural history of the United States. At the
suggestion of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Chas. Lyell, Mr.
(now Hon.) John A. Lowell had, in 1845, invited
Professor Agassiz to Boston, to deliver a course of
lectures before the Lowell Institute. The Bostonians
claim, and with reason, to represent the best of American
intellectual life, so that this was no slight compliment.
About the same time that the invitation reached
Agassiz, the King of Prussia, through the ever-
thoughtful mediation of Humboldt, had presented
him with a sum of money in aid of a scientific
mission to America. Thus encouraged by invitation
and by pecuniary aid, he crossed the Atlantic in the
autumn of 1846, and made his debut in the United
States as a lecturer. His first lectures were on the
subject of Comparative Embryology, and they were
listened to by audiences of from 1,500 to 2,000,
embracing all that was most cultivated in science and

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 1()!»

letters in Boston and the vicinity. This course of
lectures led to important results. It aroused an
enthusiasm for the study of nature in the widesi
circles ; and Agassiz understood how to make the
scientific development of North America in this
direction a matter of honour for the whole nation.

Immediately afterwards, by special request, he
delivered another course of lectures upon the glaciers
and the phenomena connected with their former
greater extension.

Hitherto Agassiz had been the brilliant dis-
coverer, now he was to be the explorer and the
teacher. In 1847, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, witli the
same judicious selection that M. Coulon had shown
fifteen years before, offered to found for Agassiz a
professorship of zoology and geology in the Scien-
tific School at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.
Having obtained an honourable discharge from his
European engagements, he accepted the appointment,
and gave up all thought of returning to Europe.
He placed his activity, his science, and his talents,
at the disposal of the nation that showed itself so
anxious to keep him, and where he would enjoy a
social power and a liberty, which were hardly possible
to the savans of the Old World.

As in Neuchatel, so in Cambridge, Agassiz in a very
short time attracted around him a circle of young
men, enterprising lovers of natural science. He
entered upon his duties at Cambridge in the spring
of 1849, and at the close of the academic year
started with twelve of his pupils upon a scientific

110 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

exploration of the shores of the Lake Superior. The
results of this journey appeared in the well-known
work, published in 1850, " Lake Superior : its Physical
Character, Yegetation, and Animals," in which Agassiz
discussed in detail the erratic phenomena of the lake,
its future form and extent, and the character of its
ichthyologieal and reptilian fauna. The narrative
part was written by Mr. J. Eliot Cabot, together with
the reports of the lectures which the Professor delivered
at the close of each day; and Mr. J. Le Conte con-
tributed the account of the coleoptera. In succeeding
years, he made similar expeditions with his pupils
into the interior of the United States, and with the
collections brought back laid the foundation of a
natural history museum, which until then had no
existence at Harvard University.

At the request of Professor Backe, of the Coast
Survey, Agassiz passed the winter of 1850 among
the Florida reefs, where he determined the law of
growth by which that peninsula has gradually
extended southward by the successive formation of
reefs, keys, and mud flats.

His stay at Charlestown, South Carolina, led to
his appointment in 1852, to the chair of Comparative
Anatomy at the Medical College ; but he returned
to Cambridge after two years, the warmer climate
of the south not agreeing with him. Soon after
he visited all the great towns of North America,
lecturing in all departments of zoology and geology.
Everywhere he was received with enthusiasm, for
his expositions were remarkably clear, and full of

LODIS JOHN RTJDOLPH AGASSIZ. 1 1 I

suggestive thought ; his language noble and fluent; his
knowledge of human science of the widest ; his manner
so charming, and his conversation so full of instruction,
that every one felt it a privilege to be near him.

From that time Agassiz became the declared pet
of the Americans, and was one of the most popular
men in the country, and in intellectual matters became
one of its greatest benefactors, exercising his influence
in improving education, and in increasing educational
establishments.

In 1855 he began to prepare for the publication of a
magnificent work — " Contributions to the Natural
History of the United States." In a short time the
necessary means were obtained by subscription, and
in 1857 the first volume appeared. Unfortunately, this
work only reached its fourth volume. The first contained
as an introduction the universally known and much
discussed " Essay on Classification," which latter, as a
separate work, was republished in London and Paris.
Agassiz treated in this work the questions of the origin,
development, and systematic arrangement of the organic
world, and developed from these his philosophical views
which he had obtained from his own studies and
observations, and which stand in direct opposition to
the theory of descent.

Agassiz was, however, not destined to resume his
old habits of investigation and publication. The
will of Mr. Francis C. Gray established in 1858
a fund for the support of a museum of comparative
anatomy, and a liberal private subscription, seconded
by a large gift from the state, assured the future

112 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

of the establishment. Henceforth the current of
Agassiz's thoughts ran in a new channel. In the
words of a contemporary, "he determined to found
a great museum arranged to show his views of the
relations of living animals among themselves, and
their connections in the geological and embiyological
successions. Such a museum he hoped to leave as
a legacy — his all — to the people of this country
(America), and to make it at once a mark of his
affection and a monument of his labour. He gave
less and less of his time to those special investigations
by which he had gained his reputation, and pondered
more and more on this museum, which should serve
as a tabulation of the creative thought by presenting
the creatures themselves in a connected order."

Day by day he laboured to increase his collections
and to forward their arrangement. His Brazilian
expedition, undertaken in I860, at the cost of Mr.
Nathaniel Thayer, brought back vast riches in natural
history specimens. Not the sight, however, of familiar
fishes that took him back to Munich and the time of
Spix and Martius, could turn him again to special
studies. He kept on with ever-increasing toil, and
yet preserved his relations to the public, his popular
lectures, his interest in education and agriculture,
his voluminous correspondence. All this, in addition
to his duties as Professor of Natural History, was
too much even for his powerful frame, and in 1869
he was seized with a cerebral attack which threatened
his life. From it he recovered only to enter, with
all the spirit of a youth just beginning the world,

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH A(;.\ssiz. L13

upon the Hassler Expedition of 1871, which was
under the direction of the Coast Survey. He
endured without complaint the hardships of a voyage
round Cape Horn in a small steamer, and returned
laden with new collections.

A minute exploration was made of the Saragossa
Sea, and a nest-building fish was discovered in the
vast bed of oceanic vegetation, and other important
contributions were made to natural science.

At the end of 1873 his career was suddenly and
unexpectedly closed by death. In full harness and
abundant enthusiasm for the studies which he deeply
loved, he passed away. The American papers were
full of eulogistic records of his attainments and
qualities as a man ; but for my present purpose, it
will only be necessary for me to quote one short
notice written by an eminent American, and which
appeared in the report of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences for 1873. It reads as follows : —

The last year of his life was a very happy one. He
saw the museum well supplied with funds, growing in
size, and advancing towards arrangement. There came
besides, from Mr. John Anderson, the gift of the Island
of Penikese, and a large sum in money, to found a
summer school of natural history. It was at once
started with about fifty pupils, and Agassiz had the
great pleasure of founding the first establishment of the
kind in the world.* But he killed himself in doing it.

* The station of Dr. Dohrn, at Naples, is of a
different character, and was not then in working order.

i

114 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

It was precisely this new and prolonged strain, at a
season when usually he took a sort of vacation, that
shattered his system beyond the power of repair ; and
on December 14, 1873, he died.

If we consider simply the influence of his philoso-
phical ojrinions on the mass of scientific men, Agassiz
lived too late and also too early. At all stages of its
progress, the human mind presents a kind of atrophy
of some of its parts ; and he who treats of such topics
as are appreciated only by these parts speaks to deaf
ears. Continuance in one set of opinions through
several generations produces at last lassitude, then a
sort of rebellion, and finally the welcoming of anything
novel, as a glad relief. Here is a great, if not the
greatest cause of changes which are on the whole
beneficial. The tree of knowledge at such times throws
out new and strong branches, albeit they are all on one
side. Thus it has been with natural science. Scholars
get tired of Bridgwater Treatises, and talk of means and
ends, and of plans of creation ; moreover, they were in
some places exasperated by opposition from Church or
State. Then they were getting suffocated by their
material ; and, when the species of shells increased to
thousands, and of beetles to tens of thouands, they
exclaimed, "It is enough — give us relief ! "

Their relief was like that of the Mediaeval Catholic
Church. Positivism advanced, and said, " Bury every-
thing that is inconvenient, and come and lean on me
and I will give you peace. Thought and causation
have no real existence. They and you are only figures in
a procession that has neither beginning nor end . Amuse

LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 115

yourselves, therefore, by looking at this procession,
until the inevitable comes upon you." This is the
philosophy which to-day is powerful among thinking
men ; and its tide is fated to rise higher before it
ebbs. Like all systems, it will work good and evil ;
but its good will remain, and its evil melt away.

Against such a current Agassiz struggled in vain.
He was a theistic philosopher, who chose for his
field the working of supreme thought in the animal
creation. He addressed a world of learned men, the
majority of whom could not understand what basis
theistic philosophy had, and of whom not a few
accused him of want of honesty for even introducing
such a theme. The time will come when his power and
insight will be appreciated. Meanwhile we must be
content with his successes that lay in a lower plane ;
they were his special zoological investigations, and his
brilliant career in the United States, where he raised an
enthusiasm for high studies, and where he established
a great centre of science.

On his fiftieth birthday, the late poet Longfellow,

who lived for some years a neighbour of Agassiz, and

was a fellow-prof essor with him in Harvard University,

addressed to him a poetical tribute, which I cannot

do better than quote : —

It was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Yaud

A child in its cradle lay.
And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,
Saving:, " Here is a storv-book

My Father has written for thee.

116 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

" Come, wander with me, " she said,

" Into regions yet imtrod,
And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God ! "

And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,

Who sang to him night and day
The songs of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,

Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,

Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,

And will not let him go,
Though at times his heart beats wild

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud,

Though at times he hears in his dreams

The Ranz des Yaches of old,
And the rush of the mountain streams

From glaciers clear and cold.

And the mother at home says, "Hark!

For his voice I listen and vearn ;
It is growing late and dark,

And mv bov does not return ! "

He possessed many admirable traits of character.
There was about him no vain ostentation, but in
manner he had a child-like naturalness which made
his society exceedingly instructive and agreeable. He
evidenced too at all times a reverent spirit. Deeply
did he realize the grandeur and uses of life ; and in
his investigations of the wonders of nature he felt
that he was searching out the thoughts of Grod. The

LOUTS JOHN RUDOLPH A6ASSIZ. 117

books wliicli lie left behind him as his chief legacy
to mankind adduce testimony wherein he sees the
manifestation of a mind as powerful as it is prolific;
the acts of an intelligence as sublime as it is provident ;
the marks of goodness as infinite as wise ; and the
clear demonstration of the existence of an Author
of all things, Ruler of the universe.

CUYIER.

the distinguished individual whose
history forms the subject of the
present paper it has been truly
said : — " His various acquirements,
equally vast and minute, his multi-
plied labours, his elevated views,
his private virtues, have furnished
to each admirer so many topics of
just eulogy. The naturalist, the
moralist, the orator, the statesman,
have each acknowledged the sympathy which binds
them all to a man in whom every variety of merit
seemed to be united, and whose eloquence equally
adorned and enforced the philosophy of science and
of life. His attached friends, and the pupils who
reverenced him and loved him, have felt that the
contemplation of such a character charmed and
elevated their own, and have lingered over reminis-
cences, before which all that was mean, or indolent,
or intellectual fled away."

118

CUVIER. L19

The parents of young Ouvier inflicted upon liini
a terrible string of Christian names, for it was in
full, Georges Chretien Leopold Frederic Dagoberl
Cuvier, was born at Montbeliard (then belonging to
the Duke of AVurtemburg) , August 23, 1769.

The family came originally from a village in the
Jura, which still bears the name of Cuvier; but becom-
ing the victims of religious persecution they were
much impoverished, and were driven to settle at
Montbeliard at the period of the Revolution, and
where some of its members held offices of distinction.

The grandfather of Cuvier had two sons, the
younger of whom entered a Swiss regiment in the
service of France. A brave man and an excellent
officer, he rose to high honours, and at the age of
fifty married a lady considerably younger than
himself, and had three sons. The eldest died in
infancy, the second became the naturalist, and the
third was Frederick Cuvier. As Georges had a
delicate constitution, his mother watched over him
with the tenderest care. She taught him to read,
made him repeat to her his Latin lessons, instructed
him in drawing, and developed that ardent desire
for knowledge which was so remarkable in him.

At the age of ten he was placed at a school called
the Gymnase, where he remained for four years.
He made rapid progress, and was constantly at the
head of the classes of geography, history, and
mathematics, and acquired Greek and Latin with
readiness.

At this early period his taste for natural history

120 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

was stimulated by reading a copy of Buffon, which
he found at the house of a relative ; and his
memory was so retentive that, at the age of twelve,
he was perfectly familiar with the descriptions of
birds and quadrupeds. At the age of fourteen he
formed a kind of academy from among his school-
mates, of which he was president. He drew up the
regulations, and fixed the meetings for every
Tuesday at a stated hour, and seated on his bed,
and placing his companions round a table, he
ordered that some work should be read which
treated either of natural history, philosophy, history,
or travels. The merits of the book were then
discussed, after which the youthful president summed
up the whole, and pronounced a sort of judgment
on the matter contained in it, which judgment was
always strictly adopted by his disciples.

He was then remarkable for his declamatory
powers ; and on the anniversary fete of the sovereign
of Montbeliard (Duke Charles of Wurtemburg) he
composed an oration in verse on the prosperous
state of the principality, and delivered it fresh
from his pen, in a firm, manly tone, which astonished
the audience. On account of a prejudice on the
part of the head of the school, arising from annoy-
ance at some sarcasms in which young Cuvier had
indulged, this display of talent did not meet with
its proper reward ; and instead of being placed in
the first rank of the themes presented, it was
included in the third rank. This was the more
vexatious, as the station of the boy at college

CUVIER. |Jl

depended on it; and though Cnvier afterwords felt
that the change in his destiny — he was preparing
himself for the Church — which resulted from this
circumstance was one for which he had much reason

to be thankful, yet at the time its evident injustice
was severely felt.

The fame of the young student, however, and his
disappointment, reached the ears of Duke Charles, and
when on a visit to Montbeliard, he sent for Cuvier,
and took him under his special favour, and sent him
to the Academy of Stuttgart, in March, 1784.

After studying philosophy for twelve months, he
applied himself to the science of fiscal administration,
because it gave him an opportunity to pursue his
favourite natural history in books, in the fields, and
in cabinets. One of the professors gave him a copy
of Linnaeus' "System of Nature," which was his
library on natural history for several years. While
occupied by such reading and the collection of
specimens, he also obtained several prizes in his
class studies, including the prize for the German
language.

At the termination of his academical career, Cuvier
wag promised a place in the service of his country
when a position became vacant ; but circumstances
compelled him to seek employment in a manner
wholly different from his own wishes, or the hopes of
his patron. The unsettled state of finance in France
caused his lather's pension to be withheld ; and
being thus unwilling to burden his father, and unable
to wait, perhaps two or three years, till an oppor-

122 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

t unity of advancing his fortunes should be presented
to the Duke, Cuvier was obliged to accept the offer
of M. Parrot, a countryman, and become a private
tutor in a Protestant family. Those who knew his
extraordinary talents considered the office as a lament-
able waste of his powers ; but here, again, that which
was considered a serious misfortune proved a stepping-
stone to fame and success. In July, 1788, Cuvier
arrived at Caen, in Normandy, as private tutor in
the family of Count cVHericy, for the education of
his son. In this situation he remained until 1794.
On arriving at Caen, he brought with him that
love of labour, that depth of reflection, perseverance,
and uprightness of character, from which he never
swerved. To these admirable foundations for renown
he afterwards added that remarkable clearness of
system, perfection of method, and tact of giving
only what is necessary, followed by that elegant
summing up of the whole which particularly
distinguishes the French writers : the whole was
completed by the most perfect modesty and that
respect for his own esteem without which talents
become the medium of traffic for the mere accpiire-
ment of wealth. Whilst with the Count's family,
Cuvier saw all the nobility of the surrounding
country, and acquired the forms and manners of the
best society. It may be said that, engaged as he
was as a private tutor in a retired district at the
age of twenty-one, he laid the foundation of that
fame which was to fill the world, and to reach to
distant ages.

cuvier. L23

He pursued at Caen natural history with great
zeal, the district being very favourably situated i"<»r
the study both of terrestrial and marine animals.
Some terebratulce having been dug up in his vicinity,
he conceived the idea of comparing fossils with
living species. The dissection of some molluscs
suggested to him the necessity of a reform in the
classification of animals ; and here originated the
germ of his two great works, the " Ossemens
Fossiles," and the " Regne Animal."

He said to a friend regarding his observations and
thoughts which he had committed to paper : " These
manuscripts are solely for my own use, and doubtless
contain nothing but what has been done elsewhere, and
better established by the naturalists of the capital, for
they have been made without the aid of books or col-
lections." Nevertheless, almost every page of these
precious manuscripts was full of new facts and en-
lightened views, which were superior to almost all that
had previously appeared.

While he was thus employed, a society was formed
at Valmont, in his neighbourhood, for the encouraev-
ment of agriculture. L'Abbe Tessier had sought at
this place a refuge from the persecutions of the revolu-
tionists, and at one of the meetings of the new society,
Cuvier discovered this learned old man, under hi-
disguise of a surgeon, and addressed him by name.
He had been able to recognize him from his style oi
speaking, which strongly resembled that of his writings ;
but the recognition was at first the cause of alarm
to the poor abbe, who was then under proscription.

124 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

He found in Cuvier, however, a generous friend and
admirer, and was so delighted with his talents, that
he afterwards wrote of him to Jussien in terms of the
highest commendation.

Through his acquaintance with M. Tessier, he began
a correspondence with Greonroy St. Hilaire, Lapecede,
and other Parisian savants on subjects of natural
history ; and in the spring of 1795 he accepted their
invitation to go to Paris, and was appointed professor
in the central school of the Pantheon, for which he is
said to have composed his " Tableau elementaire de
l'Histoire NatureUe des Animaux," in which he first
published his ideas on zoological arrangement.

M. Mertrud had been appointed professor of com-
parative anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes. Feeling
himself unable from age to discharge all its duties,
he called upon Cuvier to assist him, who at this time
invited his brother Frederic to. join him, and com-
menced the collection of comparative anatomy, which
has since become so famous and extensive.

In 1796 the National Institute was formed, and
Ouvier was associated with Lapecede and Daubenton
in the section of zoology, and was its third secretary.
The death of Daubenton, at the close of 1799, made
vacant for Cuvier the chair of natural history at the
College de France in 1800, and in 1802 he succeeded
Mertrud as professor of comparative anatomy at the
Jardin des Plantes.

In 1796 he announced his discovery of red blood
in leeches, and in the following year he read his cele-
brated paper on the nutrition of insects.

cuvier. L25

On the return of Napoleon from Egypt in 1800,
when he was made First Consul, and was ambitious
of every variety of fame, he placed himself at the
head of the Institute, and had thus occasion to
witness the talents and sagacity of Cuvier. He was
hence induced in 1802 to appoint him one of the
six inspectors-general for establishing Lyceums in
thirty towns of France ; and it fell to the lot of
Cuvier to found those of Marseilles, Nice, and
Bordeaux, which are at present royal colleges.
During his absence from Paris, the Institute was
remodelled, and he was elected one of the perpetual
secretaries, viz., that for the natural sciences, at an
annual salary of £240.

On the death of his father, and also of his brother's
wife, who had managed the domestic affairs of the
family, he married, in 1803, the widow of M.
Duvaucel, one of the farmers-general who had
perished on the scaffold in 1794. "Without fortune,
and with the burden, or as Cuvier found it, the
blessing, of four children by her first husband, this
lady contributed largely to his happiness. SI if
brought him other four children, all of whom he was
fated to survive ; but these afflictions were the
darkest, if not the only clouds which interrupted the
sunshine of his felicity. The balance of good and
evil with which his lot was cast was thus bitterly
destroyed; but Providence heaped wealth and
honours into the uplifted scale and weighed it down
with the consciousness that they were the reward- oi
virtue and of knowledge.

126 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

In 1808 Cuvier, in his character of secretary, wrote
a report on the progress of the natural sciences from
the year 1789. A mere report was demanded, but
the author produced one of the most voluminous
treatises that had ever appeared. This report was
presented to the emperor, and in the same year,
when Napoleon created the Imperial University,
Cuvier was made one of the councillors for life, and
was thus brought constantly into the immediate
presence of the emperor.

In 1810 he commenced a series of journeys for
the purpose of organizing the foreign department
for public instruction. He began with the academies
of the Italian States, then examined those of Holland,
and finally those of Lower Germany. These
journeys were doubly useful to him by establishing
his health, which had suffered in consequence of his
incessant labours, and by giving him an opportunity
of visiting the museums of those countries, where lie
took drawings of new objects, particularly of the
fossil remains of Tuscany, of which he had procured
a great number.

In 1811 his most important scientific work appeared
— that on fossil remains ; and he also wrote admirable
reports from Holland and the Hanseatic towns.

While at Hamburg the title of Chevalier was
conferred upon him by the Emperor, and assured
to his heirs. But worldly honours were not to be
transmitted to his posterity; for after losing a
daughter four years of age in 1812, he was bereaved
of his son in 1813, who was seven years of age.

cuvier. L27

The impression produced by this last stroke was
never entirely effaced. Often when walking with his
daughter he would stop before a group of boys, who
as they played reminded him of his child. This loss
happened to him when in Rome, then annexed t<>
the French empire, where he was sent to organize
the universities.

During Cuvier's sojourn at Rome, Napoleon from
his own personal feeling appointed him Master of
Requests in the Council of State; and before tin-
year had closed, he appointed him Commissionaire
Imperial Extraordinaire, and sent him to Mayence
to rouse the inhabitants of the left bank of
the Rhine against the allied troops that were
in full march upon their territory. The rapid
advance, however, of the enemy compelled him to
return, and his zeal in the cause of his country was
rewarded in 1814 by the rank of Councillor of State.
Louis XVIII. not only continued our philosopher in
this honourable office, but appointed him to the
temporary situation of Commissionaire clu Roi, in
which it became his duty to defend all new and
improved laws before the two chambers.

The tornado of the Hundred Days, though it
hurled Cuvier from the Council of State, left him in
possession of his office in the university; and after
the second revolution, he was elevated to the rank
of its chancellor.

In 1818 he visited London, and remained there
with his family and secretary for six weeks, visiting
everything worthy of notice. His remark to his

128 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

Majesty, Greorge IV., concerning our natural history
was, that if the private collections could be massed
into one, they would form a great national museum
which would surpass every other.

The election for Westminster was going on at the
period of his visit, and he frequently dwelt on the
amusement he had derived from being on the
hustings every day. " These orgies of liberty were
then unknown in France, and it was a curious
sj>ectacle for a man who reflected so deeply on all
around him, to see and hear our orators crying out
at the tops of their voices to the mob, who pelted
them with, mud, cabbages, eggs, and other sundry
missiles ; and Sir Murray Maxwell, in his splendid
uniform, flattering the crowd, who reviled him, and
sent at his head all the varieties of the vegetable
kingdom." Cuvier frequently described this scene
with great animation.

At Oxford, to which he was conducted by Dr.
Leach, he was received with great distinction, and
its splendid collections made a deep impression upon
his mind, and often called forth his admiration. He
joined Madame Cuvier and his daughter at Windsor,
and after admiring the Castle, &c, they went to pay
a visit to Sir Wm. Herschell, at Slough, where a
cloudy evening prevented them from observing any
of the celestial phenomena through that astronomer's
splendid telescopes.

The kindness and hospitality with which Cuvier
and his family were everywhere received were remem-
bered with the most grateful feelings ; and the favour-

CUVIER. 12!)

able impressions which this visit had given him of
England and her institutions, has been recorded in
his Eloge of Sir Joseph Banks, where, without any
feeling of jealousy, he bears a just and noble testi-
mony to our national greatness.

In 1818, before Cuvier had quitted England, he
was elected a member of the Academie Francaise, on
which occasion he delivered a discourse of extreme
beauty and elegance. In the following year he was
made President of the Comite de l'lnterieur, and
created a baronet. In 1822 his appointment to the
office of Grand Master of all the Faculties of
Protestant Theology was made. In 1824 as presi-
dent of one of the Councils of State, he took part
in the coronation of Charles X., on which occasion
he was made Grand Master of the Legion of Honour
and Commander of the Order of Crown by the
King of AVurtemburg. In 1827 he was appointed
Censor of the Press, but the office was so odious to
his feelings that he instantly and firmly refused it,
although at the risk of losing all his other offices by
so doing. Charles X. exhibited some displeasure on
this occasion; but afterwards gave further proof of
confidence in him by charging him with the adminis-
tration of all the non-Catholic religions in Franoe.

Sacrificing everything to the interests of science.
Cuvier formed a vast library, and permitted naturalists
who sought the privilege, to go and work in it as
in a public library. No mean spirit of jealousy of
the discoveries of others ever displayed any power
over the spirit of this extraordinary man ; on the

K

130 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

contrary, he rejoiced at the advancement of know-
ledge by whomsoever effected, and even when it led
to alterations in what he had himself propounded.
At his request travellers were sent by government
into all parts of the world to collect observations and
specimens for the enrichment of the museum. Each
of these travellers received directions and instructions
from his own mouth; so that it might be said of him
as of Linnseus, that Nature was everywhere interro-
gated in his name.

In the year 1827 Cuvier lost his only daughter,
Clementine, at the age of twenty-two, and then on the
eve of her marriage. This sad event, the loss of their
only child, overwhelmed the disconsolate parents in grief.
The feelings of Cuvier could scarcely be controlled.
The framework of his mind reeled like a vessel in full
sail that strikes upon a rock, and he rushed to his
studies as the only anchor by which his distracted
faculties could be held. Many a furrow, the channels
of many a tear now marked his manly check, and his
fine hair suddenly changed to a silvery whiteness. But
though thus prostrate, he did not

"Perish with the reed on which he leant."

He found relief under the high pressure of intel-
lectual labour, and he continued for a few vears to
pursue the studies to which his life had been so
successfully devoted.

After this period, Cuvier seems to have worked harder
than ever ; and a new proof of his perseverance came
out in 1829, being a second edition of the " Eegne

CUVIER. 131

Animal," with additions and modifications. To this
succeeded vols. 3 and 4 of his " Ichthyology '', the
former volumes having appeared the year before.

In the year 1830, Baron Cuvier opened a course of
lectures on the history and progress of science in ;ill
ages, which he continued till the end of his life. In the
same year he paid a second visit to England, and he
was in London when the French Revolution was con-
summated. Like many others, Cuvier had not antici-
pated any violent crisis from the ordonnances of
Charles X., and he quitted Paris under the influence of
this opinion. Before, however, he had been five hours
absent from the barriers, firing commenced in Paris.
The flying English overtook him near Boulogne, but
though anxious to return, he doubted if he should be
able to re-enter Paris, or even to retrace his steps, with
the passports of Charles X. He accordingly awaited a1
Calais the details of the Three Days, and having received
assurances that perfect tranquillity prevailed at Paris
he proceeded to England, where he remained only two
weeks.

Under the government of Louis Philippe, Cuvier
retained all his dignities and offices. In 1 832 he was
made a Peer of France, and his appointment of
President of the entire Council of State only waited
for the royal signature, when his career was suddenly
terminated by death.

On May 8, 1832, he had opened his course of lectures
at the College de France. After the first lecture he
felt pain and numbness in the right arm, and his throat
became affected; on the third day both arms were

132 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

seized, and the power of swallowing was lost, all his
mental faculties and the power of speech remaining
unaffected. He was perfectly calm and resigned.

Four hours before he died he was carried ^t his own
request into a cabinet where the happiest and proudest
moments of his life had been spent, and where he
wished to draw his last breath.

" Four hours before his death," says Baron Pasquier,
in his Eloge, " I was in that memorable cabinet. His
countenance was in a state of perfect repose, and never
did his noble head appear to me more beautiful, or
worthy of admiration. No alterations of a too sensible
or painful kind had yet taken place, only a little
weakness and difficulty in supporting himself were
observable.

" I held the hand which he extended to me, while he
said, in a voice scarcely articulate, ' You see what a
difference there is between the man of Tuesday' (we
met on that day) ' and the man of Sunday ; yet so
many things remain to be done ! ' I made an effort to
find words to express to him the general interest which
he excited. ' I love to believe it/ he replied, ' I have
long endeavoured to render myself worthy of it.'

At nine o'clock on the evening of the 13th May,
1832, he had ceased to live, having reached only the
age of 62, although belonging to a family remarkable
for longevity.

At his own desire, Cuvier was buried in the cemetery
of Pere la Chaise, beneath the tombstone which covered
the remains of his daughter. His funeral obsequies
were attended by men of all ranks and opinions, who,

CUVIER. 133

even in the midst of a raging pestilence, were eager
to offer upon his tomb their last tribute of affection and
admiration.

But it was not among the companions alone of his
labours and his glory that this homage of love and
sorrow was paid. In every corner of his native land,
teeming with intellectual wealth, and splendid with
immortal names, the loss of their naturalist, their
legislator and their instructor, was bewailed as a national
calamity. The remotest corners of his native land, and
those in other countries, joined in the general lamenta-
tion ; and within the temple of science itself it was felt
that one of its chief pillars had fallen.

A history of Cuvier's labours in the domain of natural
history would be the history of natural science in the
first half of the nineteenth century. When he formed
a system based on the invariable characters of ana-
tomical structure instead of external resemblances, he
discovered the true basis of a natural classification. He
first introduced the division founded on different plans
of structure of radiata, mollusca, articulata. and verte-
brata; and this has been the basis of all modern
improvements in zoology. The grand idea of Cuvier
was to discover the plan of created beings by the study
and comparison of the intimate structure of their
organism. With him, comparative anatomy and z< k il< >i:\
went hand-in-hand, and from their united facte la-
deduced the laws of a new science, that of fossil animal
life, astonishing the world with the magnitude of his
conceptions and the grandeur of his discoveries.

Linnaeus had included in his class of worms all

134 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

animals which have not red blood — more than half of
the animal kingdom. Cuvier's first researches were on
this class of animals, which in 1795 he divided into
the classes of his invertebrate series.

His very first observations in 1792 were on the
anatomy of the common patella, certain dipterions
insects, and crustaceans, in the " Journal d'Histoire
Naturelle." In the same year he studied the structure
of the mollusca, divided them into orders, and com-
menced a series of observations which resulted in his
memoir on the history and anatomy of molluscs,
published in 1817.

Comparative anatomy was the basis of Cuvier's
zoology, and we find memoirs on this subject from 1795
to 1831. The " Lecons d'Anatomie Comparee " was
but the preface of a more extended work, the plan
of which he had already completed when death over-
took him. Such as it is — a monument of vast labour' —
it has furnished materials for the development of this
science, and has from its own stores enabled critics to
point out unavoidable deficiencies. From a heap of dry,
unconnected facts concerning the structure of animals,
he obtained the general laws of organization, the limit
of variation in each organ, the marked influence of
some upon the general system, the subordination of
many, and the co-existence or incompatibility of others.
Among the prominent points are : the development of
the teeth, the structure of the larynx of birds, of the
nasal fossae and organs of hearing in cetaceans, and
of the respiratory organs in the perennibranchiate
amphibia ; the comparison of the brain in the verte-

CUVIER. 135

brata, and the relation of its development to the in-
telligence ; the respiration, animal heat, muscular force,
sensory and digestive systems of these animals. For
this treatise he received one of the decennial prize-
instituted by Napoleon in 1810.

Cuvier in his scientific labours stated positively only
that which he knew from personal observation, and
therefore early directed his attention to collecting
objects of natural history. The great collection at the
Jardin des Plantes, made chiefly through his own
exertions, contributed the materials of which he made
such remarkable use. This collection was also necessary
for the determination of fossil species, which he began
to investigate while living in Normandy.

In 1796 appeared his treatise on the skeletons of
the megalonyx and megatherium, and on the skulls
of fossil bears from the caverns of Graylenreuth.
From this period till 1812 he contributed many
papers on fossil bones, the most important of which
were afterwards published under the title of
" Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles."

Deposits of molluscs and other marine animals
had long been known to exist at great distances
from and heights above the sea, and wore attri-
buted to the Deluge. Large bones discovered in
caverns or dug from the earth had given rise to
traditions of the existence of giants in the early
ages; and even philosophers regarded the fossil
impressions in the rocks and the shells in the
ground as accidental freaks of nature. Bernard
Palissy, an unlettered potter, discovered the annua]

136 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

origin and former existence of these objects, and
although he defied the learned men of the sixteenth
century to disprove his statement, it was not until
the end of the seventeenth that his ideas met with
a scientific recognition.

Founded on these now acknowledged facts, many
theories, all more or less fanciful, were success-
ively adopted, and abounded until the middle of the
eighteenth century, when more rational views began
to prevail, and the study of fossils to excite that
attention which, in the hands of Cuvier, resulted
in establishing many of the laws of geology and
palaeontology. The bones of the giant teutobochus
had been long since recognized as those of elephants;
the skeleton of the supposed antediluvian became
under the eye of Cuvier that of a gigantic aquatic
salamander. The fact of ancient creations of animals,
entirely distinct from the present species and long-
since exterminated, was set at rest by the comparison
of fossil and living animals by Cuvier.

In his first notes on fossil elephants, in 1800, lie
announced his views on extinct animals and commenced
a series of observations unparalleled in the annals of
science for brilliancy and profound insight into
natural laws. With him a bone, or even a portion
of one, was sufficient for the restoration of a fossil
animal which he had never seen, simply from the
principle of the unchangeable relations of organs.

He made several epochs of creation. The first com-
prised the molluscs, fishes, and monstrous reptiles ;
the second the anaplotherium and palseotherium, the

CUV IKK. L37

m

singular pachyderms of the neighbourhood of Paris;
the third the mammoth, mastodon, gigantic sloths,
&c. ; then came a fourth, the age of man and the
present creation. Anterior to the first epoch was a
period in which no organic life, either animal or
vegetable, existed on the earth. To Cuvier was
principally due the discovery and exploration of the
terra incognita of remote ages.

In 1817 was published the " Regne Animal,"
which has served as the basis for subsequent zoologi-
cal classifications. The last great work of Cuvier,
which he undertook in conjunction with Valenciennes,
is the " Histoire Naturelle des Poissons." This
contains the application of his principles of classifi-
cation to class of fish. Linnaeus had determined
about 500 species, Lapecede 1,500. The title of this
book implies its magnitude. It is " Natural History
of Fishes, Containing more than 5,000 Species of these
Animals, Described after Nature and Distributed
according to their Affinities, with Observations on
their Anatomy, and Critical Researches on their
Nomenclature, Ancient as well as Modern."

Besides the " Report on the Progress of the Physical
Sciences," undertaken at the request of Napoleon.
Cuvier displayed the extent of his acquirements by his
reports before the Institute, on meteorology and natural
philosophy, in general chemistry and physios, mine-
ralogy and geology, botany, anatomy, and physiology,
zoology, travels connected with natural science, medi-
cine, surgery, and other subjects.

He contributed many articles on natural history to

138 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

the " Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles." Prominent
among these is the one on "Nature," in which he
combats the mataphysical systems of pantheism or
plurality of gods, and refers everything to the wisdom
and goodness of an Almighty Creator.

Cuvier had a deeply religious nature, and his re-
searches into science only intensified his veneration for
the great Author of all things.

His language, both written and spoken, was clear,
forcible, precise, and animated, frequently rising to the
highest eloquence. The benignity and noble expres-
sion of his countenance were remarkable.

In private life he was kind, affable, and ready to
communicate information. He had the greatest love
for order and regularity, and rarely allowed himself to
be disturbed during the hours set aside for study, but
during Iris hours of audience he was accessible to every-
body.

With Iris other accomplishments he was an expert
draughtsman, and many of his plates were drawn by
himself. He left a large collection of designs intended
to illustrate his unfinished work on comparative
anatomy.

The disinterestedness of Cuvier's character is shown
not only by the acts of his life, but by the small fortune
he left at his death, which was only about £5,000 and a
library which cost him a similar sum. The latter was
purchased by government and given to various institu-
tions, principally to the " Jardin des Plantes."

When we consider the number of offices he held, and
the duties which he conscientiously performed, any one

CUVIER. 13D

of which after his death was sufficient for a man of great
talent, and some of which could not he as completely
filled, we are able to form some idea of the varied
acquirements, the unceasing industry, the wonderful
memory, and the transcendent ability of Cuvier.

By universal consent he is regarded as one of the best
of men, most brilliant of writers, soundest of thinkers,
most far-sighted of philosophers, purest of statesmen,
and may with every reason be classed among the greatest
naturalists of modern times.

BUFFON.

eorge Louis Le Clerc, afterwards
Count Buffon, the celebrated French
naturalist, was born at Montbard,
in Burgundy, September 7, 1707 —
the same year in which Linnaeus
was born. His father was a coun-
cillor of parliament of Dijon. It
was the wish of his father that
Buffon, with a view to qualify him-
self for the magistracy, should adopt
the profession of the law. This, however, had no
charms for the latter, and his father quickly observed
that astronomy and mathematics were likely to become
the chief objects of his son's study. He wisely allowed
him to follow the path which he had chosen, and he
became so interested in geometry that some of his
biographers assert, that while his youthful companions
were at their sports he wTas generally to be found in
some retired corner, poring over his pocket copy of

140

Buffon.

BUFFOK. 14'1

Euclid with a fervour equal to that displayed by Parson
Adams for his ^Eschylus.

►Such a mode of spending leisure hours, which other-
wise would have been those of play, brought forth its
fruits in due season, and many stories were current that
he had anticipated Newton in some of his discoveries,
but that he had withheld his claim, observing that
people were not obliged to accept the assertion. These
statements, in the light of the present day, should
be received with reserve, for, to leave dates out of the
question, it cannot be denied that vanity was certainly
not absent as an ingredient in the character of young
Buffon.

When he was about twenty years of age he made the
acquaintance of Lord Kingston and his tutor, both
of whom he met at Dijon. This soon ripened into
friendship, and he arranged to travel through Italy in
their company. The tutor appears to have been
possessed of high scientific attainments, and his pupil
at the same time a ready partner in his pleasures.
While in Italy he received intelligence of the deatli of
his mother, a lady of considerable intelligence. This
event placed him in possession of a large income, nearly
£12,000 a year, and from this time onward his life was
a completely independent one, and he was enabled to
devote himself entirely to his scientific pursuits.

On his return to Montbard, he, on account of some
private entanglement, found it necessary to leave the
place for a brief period, and he accordingly went to
Paris, and visited England. He did not settle on b a
estate "for good" until he had reached twenty-five.

144 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

On returning to Montbard, however, he resolutely
pursued his studies, and as it may not be uninteresting
to those who think life was not given to us to be passed in
mere frivolities, to know how Buff on passed his time, we
select the following from a modern biographer. There is
every reason to conclude that the history of one day
was to a large extent similar to that of all the others,
generally speaking, throughout a period of fifty years : —
"After he was dressed he dictated letters and
regulated his domestic affairs, and at six o'clock he
retired to his studies at the pavilion called the Tower of
St. Louis. This pavilion was situated at the extremity
of the garden, and the only furniture which it contained
were a large wooden secretaire and an arm-chair.
No books or pictures relieved the naked appearance
of the apartment, or distracted the thoughts of
the learned possessor. The entrance was by green
folding-doors ; the walls were painted green, and the
interior had the appearance of a chapel, on account of
the elevation of the roof. Within this was another
cabinet, where Buffon resided the greater part of the
year, owing to the coldness of the other apartment, and
in this room he wrote the greater number of his works.
It was a small square building, situated on the side of a
terrace, and was ornamented with drawings of birds
and insects. Prince Henrv of Prussia called it the

t/

" cradle of natural history," and Rousseau, before he
entered it, used to fall on his knees and kiss the
threshold. At nine o'clock Buffon usually took an
hour's rest, and his breakfast, which consisted of a piece
of bread and two glasses of wine, was brought to his

BUFFON. 1 \->

pavilion. When he had written two hours after break-
fast, he returned to the house. At dinner he Bpent
a considerable portion of time, and indulged in all the
gaieties and trifles which occurred at the table. After
dinner he slept an hour in his room, afterwards took a
walk, and during the rest of the evening, he either con-
versed with his family or guests, or sat at his desk
examining his papers. At nine o'clock he went to bed.

This kind of life he passed for fifty years ; and to one
who expressed his astonishment at Iris great reputation
he replied, " Have not I spent fifty years at my desk ? '

During all this long period of time he was indefa-
tigable in his application, was extremely fond of study,
and yet in his early days, felt the inconveniences of indo-
lence. To an old friend he once said : "I was a great
lover of my bed in my youth. My poor Joseph " (a
servant who lived with him more than sixty years)
" assisted me greatly to conquer that propensity. I
promised him a crown every time he roused me at six.
The next morning he did not fail to do his duty, but I
repulsed him; he came the morning after, and I
threatened to turn him out of the room. 'You haw
gained nothing, Joseph,' I said to him at noon ; * you know
not how to manage me ; think only of my promise, and
don't listen to my threats.' The next morning he fid-
filled my wishes, by forcing me to rise in spite of my ill-
humour; and every succeeding day he was indemnified
for my cross temper when I awoke, by my thanks and
a crown. Indeed, I owe to Joseph ten or twelve volun
of my works."

In pursuing this course of living, study and regimen,

i.

146 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

there can be no doubt that Buffon prolonged his life,
notwithstanding the pangs from a painful disease from
which he suffered.

The longevity of Buffon's family was somewhat
remarkable, his father lived to the age of ninety-three,
and his grandfather was eighty-seven when he died.
Concerning the elevation of Buffon to the aristocracy of
France, we may be permitted to refer to an incident
which significantly marks the brutality and ignorance
of the French people under the Reign of Terror. The
only son left by Buifon was murdered only fifteen days
before the fall of Robespierre. It might have been
thought that the sacrifice of the son would have satis-
fied the bloodthirsty cravings of the Parisian mob ; but
no, the body and memory of the father whom the nation
had honoured at his death were not secure. During the
great storm which darkened the political horizon of
Europe, the remains of the illustrious zoologist were
torn from the grave, the lead in which his coffin was
encased was plundered, and the monument which the son
had erected to his memory was razed to the ground.

Before proceeding to give an account of the works of
Buffon, we shall mention a few particulars relating to
his person and character. His figure was noble and
manly, and his countenance, even in advanced age and
during the periods when he suffered great physical pain,
was calm and placid, and exhibited traces of singular
intelligence. Vanity, however, which seemed to have
been his predominant passion, extended even to his
person and to all his exterior ornaments. He was par-
ticularly fond of having his hair neatly dressed, and for

BUFFON. 1 47

this purpose lie employed a fashionable hair-cutter, who
operated upon him twice and sometimes three times a
day. To his dress he was particularly attentive, and
took great pleasure in appearing on Sundays before the
peasantry of Montbard in gold-laced clothes. He en-
couraged his attendants to relate to him every gossiping
story which they heard. His vanity betrayed itself on
a variety of occasions in relation to his literary perform-
ances, which were often the subjects of his discourse and
even of his commendation. When he was recommending
the perusal of the best works in every department of
taste and science, he would sometimes add with singular
presumption and self-confidence, " Capital works are
scarce ; I know but five great geniuses, Newton, Bacon,
Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself."

He was in the habit of reciting to those who
visited him, whole pages of his compositions, for he
seemed to have them almost all by heart. Notwith-
standing, however, his vanity, he listened to objections,
entered into a discussion of them, and surrendered
his own opinion to that of others when his judg-
ment was convinced. He expressed himself with
rapture concerning the pleasures accruing from study,
and he declared his preference of the writings to
the conversations of learned men, which almosl
always disappointed him, and therefore he voluntarily
secluded himself from society with such, and in
company was fond of trifling and was not at all
times gentlemanly in his conversation. He main-
tained an extensive correspondence with several
persons of rank and eminence. But his vanity was

148 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

perpetually recurring, particularly towards the close
of his career. He frequently said that he had no
fear of death, and that the hope of immortal renown
was the most powerful of death-bed consolations.

Buffon, during the greater part of his life, was
highly respected in all Europe, and it is said that
during the war, 1755 — 1762, whenever the captains
of English privateers found in their prizes any
boxes addressed to Comte de Buffon (and many were
addressed to him from every part of the world), they
immediately forwarded them to Paris unopened — a
mark of reverence for genius which ought not to
remain unrecorded.

But I took great pains in forming the style of
his writings, and as composition was to him a diffi-
cult task he repeatedly revised his works before he
published them. Such was his attention to style that
he could not bear the least deviation from accuracy
and propriety in the use of language.

" The style," said he, " is the man. Out' poets
have no style; they are coerced by the rules of nietiv.
which makes slaves of them."

To this circumstance it was perhaps owing that he
abandoned poetry, which he attempted in his youth,
and restricted himself to prose. Such was Buffon rs
regard to fame, that he destroyed every paper which
he thought useless or unfinished, and thus preserved
his reputation from being destroyed by posthumous
publications.

Of the free sentiments which Buffon had imbibed
with regard to religion his works afford ample evi-

BUFF0N. 14!)

dence. They sufficiently indicate his attachment to
the system of materialism, and some of his remarks
respecting religion and the Creator were of such a
nature as would greatly pain a sensitive mind. T<>
quote these remarks would do no good in the present
instance. He did not attempt to argue the want of
proof as to a divine power. He simply treated all
such matters with great contempt. Here again it is
probable that his excessive vanity led him into giving
utterance to language which he did not sincerely fed.

Buffon's literary career began with a series of
translations. On his return to France from his tour
in Italy, he translated into French two English works
— the "Vegetable Statics" of Dr. Hales, and Newton's
" Treatise on Fluxions." These translations, and th<
prefaces which he attached to them, were the firsl
essays which, as it were, revealed him to himself,
for from this time forth he quitted not the path of
research into which his genius had led him. 1 1
wrote successively several papers upon geometry .
physics, and other subjects, which opened for him the
doors of the Academie des Sciences, into which bo<l\
he was elected at the early age of twenty-six. In
the year 1739 he was appointed to an important
post in the Jardin des Plantes. The almost acci-
dental circumstances which led to the appointment
of Buff on to the position are deserving of mention
as affording another illustration of the truth of the
old axiom, that great events frequently spring from
trifling causes.

The Jardin des Plantes answers to our Zoological

150 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

Gardens and the Botanical Grardens at Kew combined,
and for years they had been under the care of the
first physician to the king. This physician was
indifferent to the science of botany ; he had neglected
the garden, which had consequently fallen into such a
state of decay as to attract the attention of govern-
ment. An inquiry into the management having been
instituted, it was finally determined that the superin-
tendence of the chief physician should be abolished, and
the direction of the garden being deemed worthy of
special and continuous attention, the post was conferred
on a M. Dufay, a man of learning and science. After
occupying the post for some years he was taken seriously
ill, and a friend said to him, " Buff on is the only man
enabled by his strength of character to continue the
work of regeneration begun by you " ; and Dufay himself
signed the application that Buffo n should be appointed,
and from that period dates the development of the
garden.

Assured of the royal favour, and safe in popular
esteem, Buffon found himself unlimited in means and
uncontrolled in scheme. He purchased houses, lands,
collections. He pulled down, rebuilt, enlarged, reor-
ganized. The king threw open to him the public
treasury, and of this princely credit Buffon made ample
and unshrinking use, guarding, however, at the same
time, against unpractical and visionary projects.

In 1744, Buffon first published his " Theory of the
Earth," which was included in his comprehensive and
most celebrated work, " Natural History, Greneral and
Particular," which commenced in 1749 and was com-

BUFFON. 151

pletecl iu 1767, extending to no fewer than fifteen
different volumes. To these, supplements were after-
wards added equal to several more volumes. In the
anatomical portion of this work, the author had the
assistance of M. D'Aubenton, but in all the other
departments Buff on himself displays his learning,
genius and eloquence, and he also indulges his fancy in
exploring and delineating the whole economy of nature.
He begins with a theory of the earth, which, as well
as the other planets, he supposes to have been originally
a mass of liquefied matter, dashed out of the body of
the sun by the violent illapse of a comet. He then
covers it with ocean, from which he forms strata by
deposition, and mountains by the flux and reflux of
the tide. Subterraneous fires, eruptions, and earth-
quakes produce other changes, and the world we now
inhabit is but the ruins of a former world. In his
account of the population of the earth with living
creatures, he investigates the analogies between vege-
table and animal life, and in explaining the mystery of
animal generation, he allows ample range to his imagin-
ation in a variety of hypotheses and conjectures.

Buffon's natural history of animals commences with
that of man, whom he traces from the cradle to the
grave, through the development and maturation of
his bodily organs and mental powers, the nature and
operation of his senses, and the several varieties of
his species, introducing and intermixing in the
research many curious discussions. He then investi-
gates the nature of brute animals in general, and
marks the distinction between them and man by

152 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

denying them a soul and a memory, properly so
called, and making all their actions to spring from
external impressions.

In a supplementary volume published in 1776,
Buffon added the history and figures of several new
animals, with valuable additions to most of those
described in the original work, together with a most
ingenious dissertation on mules.

Disdaining the arrangements of systematic natural-
ists, Buff on has rejected all the received principles of
classification, and has thrown his subjects into groups.
Not content with deviating from established modes
of distribution, he ridicules the authors of systematic
arrangements, and particularly Linnaeus, whose zeal and
labours in investigating and classing natural objects
entitle him to the highest praise.

It is hardly necessary to remark that Buffon
adapted his style to the particular subjects of his
discussion. Whilst the mere enumeration of facts,
or descriptions of the figure, dimensions, and colours
of animals, admit of no other ornament than that
of perspicuity, topics of philosophy and argument
require a higher and more figurative expression. Of
these different species of writing the works of Buffon
afford numerous examples. It has also been noted
that his style occasionally rises above the level of
his subject, and this is particularly the case when he
is painting in glowing colours the manners and
habits of the lion, the horse, the elephant, and
others of his favoivrite subjects. By the indulgence
of this passion for high painting, he has frequently

BUFFON. L53

been betrayed into a deviation from the limits of
simple truth, and has been led to wander into the
regions of fancy. In particular and minute obser-
vation he excels, and by his indefatigable researches
he made a most valuable addition to the treasure of
authenticated facts. But at the same time it can-
not be disputed that Buffon was occasionally misled
by an undue attachment to theory, as well as by the
ambition of distinguished eloquence.

Of what Buffon calls the "method" of his
natural history, his own description is so curious,
and in a sense "unmethodical' as compared with
previous systems, but is yet so full and explicit, that
it is a valuable lesson in itself. He imagines a
man who, having forgotten all things, wakes up
afresh to a sight of the objects which surround
him; he places this man in a country where animals,
birds, fishes, plants, and minerals are presented
successively before him. "Soon," he says, "this
man will begin to form a general idea of animated
matter; he will easily distinguish it from inanimate
matter, and in a very brief space of time he will
readily distinguish animated matter from vegetable
matter, and will naturally arrive at this first grand
division — animal, vegetable, and mineral; and he will
also have gained a clear idea of these three great
objects, so different from each other — earth, air, and
water; he will be enabled in a little time to form
a particular idea of the animals which inhabit the
earth, of those which exist in the water, and th<
which rise into the air, and consequently he will

154 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

easily form for himself this second division — quad-
rupeds, fishes, "birds ; and the same in the vegetable
kingdom, with trees and plants, he will very readily
distinguish them, whether by their height, substance,
or general appearance." The following is what he
says on this matter : —

" This is what the simple inspection must necessarily
give him, and what, with very slight attention, he
cannot fail in recognising ; this is also what we ought
to regard as real, and respect as a division given by
Nature herself. Afterwards, let us put ourselves in
the place of this man, or let us suppose that he has
acquired the same amount of knowledge and experience
as we ourselves possess, he will come to judge the
objects of natural history by their relation with
himself; those which are the most necessary, the
most useful to him, will hold the first place. For
example, he will give the preference in the order
of animals to the dog, the ox, &c, and he will
always be better acquainted with those which will
be the most familiar to him, and afterwards he will
occupy himself with those which, without being
familiar, still inhabit the same localities, and the same
climate, as the deer tribe, the hare, and all wild animals,
and it will not be until he has acquired a thorough
knowledge of all these animals that his curiosity will
lead him to the research of those inhabiting foreign
climates, as the elephant, the dromedary, &c. The
same process will be gone through with regard to fishes,
birds, insects, shells, minerals, and in fact, all the other
productions of nature ; he will study them in proportion

BTJFFON. 155

to the utility he may be enabled to derive from them ;
he mil consider them in measure as they present them-
selves more familiarly to his eyes ; and he will arrang
them in his mind relatively to this order of his know-
ledge, because such is, in fact, the order in which he has
acquired them, and according to which it is necessary
he should preserve them. This order, the most natural
of all, is that which we have believed it our duty to
adopt. Our method is not more mysterious than the
one we have just seen."

On reading this quotation we cannot but wonder when
we perceive to what lengths prejudice or prepossession
for a favourite doctrine may lead an author, and when
the period at which Buff on wrote these remarks is
taken into consideration, surprise will increase. AVhen
he wrote the foregoing more than half a century had
elapsed since Ray and Tournefort had published their
great works on method; the ideas of Bernard de
Jussien had begun to spread, and Iinnseus had given
to the world his " Fundamenta Botanica," the first
germ of a new philosophy of the science.

After the completion of his history of quadrupeds
in 1767, Buff on was interrupted in the progress oi
his labours by a severe illness, and therefore the
two first volumes of his " History of Bird-" did not
appear till the year 1771. In the composition of the
greatest part of these he was indebted to the labours
of M. G-ulneau de Montbeillard, who adhered s«» dnsely
to Buffon's mode of thinking and of expression that
the public could not perceive any difference between
the style of writing of the two. The four subsequent

156 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

volumes were the joint production of both writers, and
each author prefixed his name to his own articles. The
three remaining volumes were written by Buffon himself,
with the assistance of the Abbe Bexon, who formed the
nomenclature, drew up most of the descriptions, and
communicated several important hints.

It was in the preparation of this that Buffon's pecu-
liar system of method which he pursued in the first
portion of his work, and of which we have already
spoken, began to undergo a change. As he advanced with
his work, he conformed himself more and more to the
ideas, and by the ideas to the language, of the natural-
ists. He felt more and more the necessity of ranging
objects according to their affinities, and as Cuvier has
well remarked, " On reaching his history of birds, he
tacitly submitted himself to the necessity under which
we all are, of classifying our ideas in order to our
obtaining a clear representative of the whole."

We may add that he did not wait till then. When,
after having described one after the other, and without
any methodical aim, the horse, ass, ox, sheep, goat, pig,
dog, cat, in fact all the domestic animals, he proceeds
to the wild animals, more than once, and evidently de-
signedly so, he places together kindred species. For
instance, he places deer near the roebuck, the polecat
near the marten. On coming to the monkeys he places
them all together, and even distributes them by distinct
groups according to very good characters. But it
certainly is above all in his " History of Birds," that, as
Cuvier remarks, his march becomes really and scientific-
ally methodical.

BUFFON. 107

" In place," says Buff on himself, "of treal ing birds one

by one, that is to say, by distinct and separate species,
I will unite them several together in one grim-."
And this he does, for to each principal species, or lli.it
which he takes as a type, he adjoins all the Bpeci< 3,
whether of our own or foreign climates, which agree
with it ; by these means he forms regular groups, families
and genera, and he almost always respects the great and
true characteristics.

When we speak, then, of the ideas of Buff on regard-
ing method, we must take into consideration the epoch
in which he held them, and, if we may so express our-
selves, their date. No man, perhaps, more constantly
modified his thoughts than Buffon, because no man
more constantly elaborated them. An example of this
is before us — he commenced his labours by compara-
tively ridiculing method, and he ended by striking out
and pursuing a very good one of his own.

When Buffon commenced his great work he was no
more an anatomist than he was a zoologist ; he became
a zoologist later, but never an anatomist, strictly speak-
ing ; and yet, on the one hand, he did much for anatomy,
and on the other, he owed much to it. Buffon is the
first who ever joined the anatomical, thai is to say the
interior, description to the exterior description of the
species. He it was who called and inspired his friend
and fellow-labourer Daubenton, and by his hands laid
the first foundations of comparative anatomy, and
perhaps he understood better than Daul u 'i it <>n himself
all the bearings of the science.

In 1774 Button began to publish a supplemeul to hifl

158 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

Natural History, consisting of the " History of
Minerals." These supplemental volumes, of which
the fifth, appeared in 1778, contain many curious
and valuable experiments, as well as much theory, too
much of it, however, too lax for the rigour of modern
science. The concluding volume may he considered
as a kind of philosophical romance. It comprehends
what the author fancifully denominates the " Epochs
of Nature," or those great changes in the state of the
earth which he supposes to have successively resulted
from his hypothesis of its original formation out of
the sun. Of these epochs he enumerates seven, of
which six are supposed to have been previous to the
creation of man. In the description of these epochs,
as to both their causes and effects, the author has
indulged the sport of fancy, and formed a sort of fairy
tale, which he rendered both instructive and amusing.

After he had completed his " History of Minerals,"
Buff on had formed a design of composing a " History
of Vegetables," but this project was defeated by his
death, which occurred, as already stated, on the 16th
of April, 1778. His last words were spoken to his
son, and were, " Never quit the path of honour and
of virtue : it is the only way to be happy."

The works of Buffon, as a naturalist of the highest
order have now been before the public for nearly a
century. They have long ago passed the critical
ordeal, and it is pretty generally acknowledged that
while they contain much to praise, they are by no
means undeserving of reproach. The sentiments
which they promulgate, that have any relation to

BUFF0N. L59

religion, are extremely erroneous. lie is a decided
enemy to the doctrine of final causes, and he refers
to unconscious nature every operation that ought to be
attributed to a designing, kind, and ever benevolent
Deity. He never

" Looks through nature, up to nature's God,"

but perversely substitutes the effect for the cause, the
outcome of the divinity for the divinity itself.

His labours, however, afford ample proofs of the
power of genius, when directed by taste, and his
particular descriptions of animals often exhibit an
elegance of style which is to be met with in no other
work of its kind. He had a mind well calculated for
his task, and was indefatigable in his exertions to
procure information. He spared no pains or expense
to forward his undertaking nor any labour to complete
it. Inattention and idleness were equally unknown
to him. He never wasted the day in making resolu-
tions for the morrow, but by constant and well-regulated
exertion has left a striking example of what may be
done by a proper division of our time, a due observance
that no part of it passes unemployed, and a patienl and
steady perseverance in whatever we undertake.

Fg!^^^3 S^-fl^W^^t^MW

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART.

his distinguished Scottish geologist
was born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire,
November 14th, 1797. His father,
Charles Lyell, was a man of literary
and scientific pursuits, and it may
fairly be inferred that the bent of
the mind of his son was somewhat
inclined by his own studies, he being
an ardent botanist and also trans-
lator of the " Vita Nuova ' and the
"Convito' of Dante. The subject of our sketch was
the eldest of ten children, two brothers andseven sisters,
who all lived to grow up.

In a characteristic autobiography of his boyish
days, which he wrote for the " instruction and amuse-
ment'1 of his wife, who was a daughter of the cele-
brated Leonard Horner, he thus records his entrance
into life. Premising that his mother was a Yorkshire-
woman, the daughter of a Mr. Thomas Smith, of Maker
Hall, Swaledale, gifted with strong practical common-

160

SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART. 16-3

sense, and a tender anxiety for the welfare of her
numerous family, he goes on to say: —

"The front of heaven was not full of fiery shapes
at my nativity, but it was a remarkable winter and
spring, so warm that my mother slept all night with
her bedroom windows open — which no doubt portended
something remarkable in the bairn ; and sure enough
he was pronounced to be the loudest and most indefatig-
able squaller of all the brats in Angus, and while he
kept others awake all night by his noise, thrived the
while most vigorously. Besides this, it was more than
twelve months before I cut a single tooth ; and some old
woman in Southampton, finding that my gums were
very hard, and that I could eat very well, very con-
siderately tried to persuade my mother that her first-
born would never have any teeth ! '

From his boyhood young Lyell had a strong inclina-
tion for natural history, especially entomology, a taste
which he was able to cultivate in the New Forest,
to which his parents and family had removed shortly
after his birth. He was educated chiefly at Midhursi
and then at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated
B.A. in 1819, and M.A. in 1821. While at the
University he had the advantage of listening to the
geological lectures of Dr. Buckland, which first opened
out to him a course of study which ultimately became
the passion of his life. On taking his degree in L82J
he came to London and entered Lincoln's Inn, and in
1825, after a delay caused by a chronic weakness of
the eyes, he was called to the bar, and was attached
to the western circuit for about two years. In the

164 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

previous year, however, he made a tour on the Con-
tinent, which gave the bias to his mind, and led him to
adopt the science of geology as a profession. During
the whole of this time, though not neglecting the
study of the law, he was slowly gravitating towards the
life of a student of science. In 1819 he had been elected
a member of the Linnsean and Greological Societies,
communicating his first paper, "On the Marls of
Forfarshire," to the latter society in 1822, and acting
as one of the honorary secretaries in 1823. In that
year he went to France, with introductions to Cuvier,
Humboldt, and other men of science, and in 1824
made a geological tour in Scotland in company with
Dr. Buckland.

Soon after the opening of King's College, London,
he was appointed Lecturer on Greology; and the dis-
courses which he delivered in this capacity were of so
original and philosophical a character as to impress
his pupils with respect for the then young branch of
science, the rapid growth of which was being watched
by many with feelings of contempt on the one hand
and fear and jealousy on the other.

In 1826 he was elected a fellow of the Eoyal
Society, from which in later years he received both
the Copley and Royal medals ; and in 1827 he finally
abandoned the legal profession and devoted himself
entirely to geology.

Before his appointment as Lecturer on Greology at
"King's College, however, Lyell's active mind had been
busy in drawing out the plan of his famous work on
the " Principles of Greology," the first volume of which

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART. 165

appeared in 1830, the second in 1832, and the third in
1833; but before the work was completed, a Beoond
edition of the earlier volumes was called for and
produced. The subsidiary title, "An Attempt to
Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface by
Reference to Causes now in Operation," gives the key-
note of the task to which Lyell devoted his life,
and in pursuance of which he made geological
tours over large portions of the Continent, and in later
years to Madeira and to the United States and Canada.

Now that geology has become an established science,
and to show the difficulties which it had to encounter
before it was admitted as one at all, and also to prove
the soundness of the premises upon which Lyell based
his opinions, we cannot do better than give the opening
paragraphs of the work just mentioned. TVe quote
from the first edition, published by John Murray, two
volumes 8vo, 1830. The work has neither preface nor
introduction, but boldly commences at Chapter 1. In
it the author says : —

" Greology is the science which investigates the suc-
cessive changes that have taken place in the organic
and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it inquires into
the causes of these changes, and the influence which
they have exerted in modifying the surface and
external surface of our planet.

" By these researches into the state of the earth and
its inhabitants at former periods, we acquire a more
perfect knowledge of its present condition, and more
comprehensive views concerning the laws now govern-
ing its animate and inanimate productions. W hen we

166 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

study history, we obtain a more profound insight into
human nature, by instituting a comparison between the

present and former states of society

" Greology is intimately related to almost all the
physical sciences, as is history to the moral. An
historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly
acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the
military art, theology ; in a word, with all branches of
knowledge whereby any insight into human affairs, or
into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be
obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist
should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy,
mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany — in
short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic
nature. With these accomplishments the historian and
geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philoso-
phical conclusions from the various monuments trans-
mitted to them of former occurrences. They would know
to what combination of causes analogous effects were
referable, and they would often be enabled to supply
by inference, information concerning many events
unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages.
But the brief duration of human life, and our limited
powers, are so far from permitting us to aspire to such
extensive acquisitions, that excellence even in one
department is within the reach of few, and those
individuals most effectually promote the general
progress who concentrate their thoughts on a limited
portion of the field of inquiry. As it is necessary that
the historian and the cultivators of moral and political
science should reciprocally aid each other, so the

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART. 1'iT

geologist and those who study natural history or
physics stand in equal need of mutual assistance. A
comparative anatomist may derive some accession of
knowledge from the bare inspection of the remains oi
an extinct quadruped, but the relic throws much greater
light upon his own science, when he is informed to what
relative era it belonged, what plants and animals weiv
its contemporaries, in what degree of latitude it once
existed, and other historical details. A fossil shell may
interest a conchologist, though he be ignorant of the
locality from which it came ; but it will be of more
value when he learns with what other species it was
associated, whether they were marine or fresh-water,
whether the strata containing them were at a certain
elevation above the sea, and what relative position they
held in regard to other groups of strata, with niany
other particulars determinable by an experienced
geologist alone. On the other hand, the skill of the
comparative anatomist and conchologist are often
indispensable to those engaged in geological research,
although it will rarely happen that the geologist will
himself combine these different qualifications in his own
person.

"Some remains of former organic beings, like the
ancient temple, statue, or picture, may have both their
intrinsic and their historical value, while there are
others which can never be expected to attract atten-
tion for their own sake. A painter, sculptor, or
architect would often neglect many ourioufl relies
of antiquity as devoid of beauty and uninstruotive
with relation to their own art, however illustrative

168 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

of refinement in some ancient nation. It lias
therefore been found desirable that the antiquary
should unite his labours to those of the historian,
and similar co-operation has become necessary in
geology. The field of inquiry in living nature being
inexhaustible, the zoologist and botanist can rarely be
induced to sacrifice time in exploring the imperfect
remains of lost species of animals and plants, while those
still existing afford constant matter of novelty. They
must entertain a desire of promoting geology by such
investigations, and some knowledge of its objects must
guide and direct their studies. According to the differ-
ent opportunities, tastes, and talents of individuals, they
may employ themselves in collecting particular kinds of
minerals, rocks, or organic remains, and these, when well
examined and explained, afford data to the geologist, as
do coins, medals, and inscriptions to the historian.

" It was long ere the distinct nature and legitimate
objects of geology were fully recognized, and it was
at first confounded with many other branches of
inquiry, just as the limits of history, poetry, and myth-
ology were ill defined in the infancy of civilization."

After the " Principles ' had passed through five
editions, a change was effected in the structure of the
work, certain chapters on geology, strictly so called,
being separated and reproduced in an amplified form
under the title of the " Elements of Geology," whilst
the remainder retained its old title.* Much of this may

* Between 1830 and 1872 eleven editions of this
remarkable work were issued, " each so much enriched,

SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART. 169

be attributed to Ly ell's intimacy with the late Sir
Roderick Murchison, a journey with whom, taken
in 1828, was especially fruitful in results. This alone
"gave rise to two distinct papers on the volcanic
district of Auvergne and the Tertiary formation- of
Aix- en- Provence ; but it was apparently while examining
Signor Bonelli's collection of Tertiary shells at Turin,
and subsequently when (after parting with Murchison)
he studied the marine remains of the Tertiary rocks of
Ischia and Sicily, that Lyell conceived the idea of divid-
ing the Tertiaries into three or four principal groups,
characterized by the proportion of recent to extinct
species of shells. To these groups, after consulting Dr.
Whewell as to the best nomenclature, he gave the names
now universally adopted — Eocene (dawn of recent),
Miocene (less of recent), and Pliocene (more of recent)
Upper and Lower; and with the assistance of M.
Deshayes, who had arrived by independent researches
at very similar views, he drew up a table of shells in
illustration of this classification."

In the "Elements," therefore, he described those
monuments of ancient changes through which the earth
and its inhabitants have passed, whilst in the "Prin-
ciples' he confined himself to the study of those forces

says a writer in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," " with

new material and the results of riper thought as to form
a complete history of the progress of geology during
that interval. Only a few days before his death Sir
Charles finished revising the twelfth edition, which
appeared in 1876."

170

EMINENT NATURALISTS.

which are in constant operation
around us, and which help us, by
fair analogy, to interpret the re-
cords of the rocks.

In 1832, Lyell married, as has

been previously stated, Mary,

eldest daughter of

7\ Leonard Horner,

■^;^hv \ his "friend

and teacher."

Kn o w 1 e d y e

writes,

"Many have

felt the

charms of the presence of Miss Horner ; many
have felt the influence of the soul that shone out
in her face ; but few know how much science
directly owes
to her. In the

companion of his lif
sharing his labour, think-
ing his success her own, Charles
Lyell had an accomplished linguist
who braved with him the dangers
and difficulties of travel, no
matter how rough ; the ever
ready prompter when memory
failed, the constant adviser
in all cases of difficulty
Had she not been part
of him, she would her-

SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART.

171

self have been better known to
fame."

In 1834, Lyell paid a visit to
Sweden and Denmark, the resnlt of
which was a paper of the utmost
scientific importance, afterwards read
before the Royal Society, "On the
Proofs of the Gradual Rising of Land in Certain
Parts of Sweden," and another,
presented to the Geological Society,
" On the Cretaceous and Tertiary
Strata of Seeland and Moen."

In 1837, Lyell again visited
Norway and Denmark, and four

172 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

years afterwards lie spent upwards of twelve months
in the United States of America, Canada, and Nova
Scotia. This last journey, together with a second
one to America in 1845, when he visited Boston, Phila-
delphia, New Orleans, and the alluvial plains of the
Mississippi, gave rise, not only to numerous original
papers, but also to the publication of two works not
exclusively geological, " Travels in North America '
(1845), and "A Second Visit to the United States"
(1849).

Concerning the first of these two works, a writer in
the "Edinburgh Review ,: says: — "These volumes
exhibit in a narrow compass more of the bright side
of the American character and institutions than we
have discovered in the panegyrics of the most ardent
democrats who have visited the land of liberty. This
effect is produced not only by the hopeful, good-
humoured, and unaffected tone in which the excellent
writer relates his adventures ; the occurrences themselv. is
tell their own favourable story."

Referring to the same work, the " North American
Review," the critical authority of the United States,
says : — " Although only a small part of these volumes
is made up from the materials of an ordinary book of
travels, yet as such it is none the worse because the
author came to inspect American rocks rather than
American manners. The remarks he does offer are so
sensible and discriminating, so evidently thrown out by
one who possesses that rare knowledge — how to observe,
and who thinks for himself, that we only regret they
are so few and cursory, and are a little provoked when

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART. 173

lie cuts short his observations upon the current topics
of the clay, and falls to 'napping the chuckie stanes'
again."

Commenting on the "Second Visit," another authority
of the time states : —

" We know of no books of modern travels so full
of agreeable and useful reading, so pregnant with
instruction respecting the geology and physical
geography of America, and so liberal and candid in
their judgments on all the social, political, and
religious questions which now everywhere agitate the
public mind. There is no object too low for our
author's notice, and none too high for his grasp.
Whatever warms the heart of the philanthropist, or
excites the zeal of the missionary, or perplexes the
genius of the statesman, or exercises the intellect of
the sage, calls forth all his powers of observation,
and rouses all Ins energies of thought. The condition
of the criminal and the slave, the educational instruc-
tion of the ignorant, the moral and religious training
of the people, the amelioration of the condition of the
poor, and the equalization of the political rights,
are all advocated with that earnestness and talent
which, seldom fail to advance the object at which
they aim."

Besides these transatlantic journeys Lyell undertook
numerous geological excursions at different times to
all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, also to Germany,
Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Madeira, and Teneriffe.
These latter islands he visited in company with Mr.
George Hartung, of Konigsberg, and together they

174 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

accumulated much valuable evidence on the age and
deposition of lava-beds, and the formation of volcanic
cones. He also revisited Sicily in 1858, when he
made such observations upon the structure of Etna
as entirely refuted the theory of "craters of elevation,"
upheld by Yon Such and Elie de Beaumont.

In the month of September, 1848, Lyell received
the honour of knighthood. This was done principally
at the solicitation of Lord Lansdowne, who in a
letter to Lyell, dated September 11th, says: — "I
have thought it on consideration so fit in the dis-
tinguished situation you occupy, and with your scien-
tific reputation, that you should receive the distinc-
tion of knighthood, that I took it upon myself to
mention the subject to the Queen, and I have her
Majesty's authority to state that she will most willingly
confer it upon you, and she understands that is with-
out any solicitation on your part."

In 1863 Sir Charles published a most important
work, which took a large proportion of the public very
much by surprise, and creating as it did the sensation
of the season in the literature of science. This was
the " (reological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,
with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by
Variation. " In it the author brought forward a
great amount of research with regard to prehistoric
times. He had previously opposed the doctrine of
development, but in this remarkable work he gave
his adhesion to Darwin on the origin of species. A
fourth edition of this truly scientific work, enlarged
and greatly improved, appeared in 1873.

SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART. 175

The "Antiquity of Man" marks a turning-point
in public opinion upon the much-vexed question of
the duration of the human race upon the earth. An
able writer thus writes of it in the " Annual Kegister '
for 1863 :—

"Within the last few years the attention of
geologists has been called to discoveries of flint im-
plements and other vestiges of humanity in strata
containing the bones of extinct animals, such as
elephants and rhinoceroses, which had long been
supposed to belong to an epoch preceding the
appearance of man upon the earth. It is many years
since these phenomena have been noticed, and indi-
vidual geologists have drawn conclusions from their
attributing a greater antiquity to man than the six
thousand years commonly allowed. Philosophical
caution, however, prevented the great body of scien-
tific men from going over to this opinion, until lately,
when Mr. Prestwich, an eminent geologist, and Mr.
John Evans, a member of the Society of Antiquaries,
examined the gravel and sand pits at Abbeville and
Amiens, and the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes,
which that far-sighted savant had long been forming,
of objects discovered in those localities. The result
was the expression of a conviction that the flint tools
found in these pits had been deposited in the gravel
beds at their first formation, and not subsequently
introduced, and the conclusion followed that man
existed previous to the formation of these strata.

" Many other prior discoveries of human bones and
remains in caves, in conjunction with those of elephants,

176 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

hyaenas, and other extinct animals, were now recon-
sidered, and a large body of facts, hitherto slighted as
inconclusive, was brought into view. Sir Charles
Lyell's work reviews the facts and considers their bear-
ing, introducing also a discussion of the Darwinian
hypothesis, and a summary of the recent controversy
on the relation of the brain of man to that of the
quadrumana. The tardiness which geologists have
shown to embrace results which now seem so firmly
established, and the materials for arriving at which have
long been at hand, is a remarkable instance of scientific
caution, not to call it a strong prepossession in favour
of an assumed theory. The question must now be
considered as settled, to the extent that a far greater
antiquity must be assigned to man than has hitherto
been believed. How much greater that antiquity may
be than the indications at present discovered show,
remains for further inquiry."

In 1864 Sir Charles Lyell was created a baronet,
when the honour was conferred him as President at the
British Association, at Bath.

His services to the science of geology were now
universally acknowledged, both at home and abroad, and
he was a member of nearly every American and Conti-
nental scientific society.

During the latter years of his life, his sight, always
weak, failed him altogether, and he became very feeble
up to the time of his death, which took place on Feb-
ruary 22, 1875, he being then in his seventy- eighth
year.

This melancholy event, although not unexpected, was

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART. 177

rendered more so by a family bereavement which
occurred only a fortnight before in the sudden death
of his brother, Colonel Lyell, who had been almost
daily with Sir Charles for a considerable period prior
to his own unexpected and fatal illness.

Dr. Hooker, President of the Royal Society (after-
wards Sir Joseph Hooker, C.B.), wrote to his sister,
Miss Lyell, on the day of his death : —

" I have just heard the distressing news, and can
haidly yet say how much I feel it. My loved, my best
friend, for well nigh forty years of my life. To me
the blank is fearful, for it never will, never can, be
filled up. The most generous sharer of my own and
my family's hopes, joys, and sorrows, whose affection
for me was truly that of a father and brother combined.
I feel deeply for you all ; two such blows to you and
your sisters, and to Mrs. Lyell (his sister-in-law) surely
hardly ever came so rapidly, so remorselessly, as it
were.

" I have just headed a memorial to Dean Stanley,
praying that he may be interred in Westminster Abbey,
the Dean having volunteered his hearty assent, and
every influence in his power to have it granted. Sir
Edward Ryan first told me of it, and now joins with
me in the earnest hope that you will allow this tribute
to be paid to the most philosophical and influential
geologist that ever lived, and one of the very best of

men."

The following is the memorial referred to, and in
pursuance of which the body of Sir Charles Lyell was
placed in Westminster Abbey : —

N

178 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

" "We, the undersigned Fellows of the Royal, the
Geological, and the Linnaean Societies, respectfully pray
that the remains of Sir Charles Lyell may be interred
in Westminster Abbey. For upwards of half a century
he has exercised a most important influence on the
progress of geological science, and for the last twenty-
five years he has been the most prominent geologist in
the world, equally eminent for the extent of his labours
and the breadth of his philosophical views."

The prayer of the memorial was immediately granted,
and the funeral was attended by an immense concourse
of public men, all his personal friends ; for by young
and old the veteran master of geology was deeply
loved and revered.

The late Dean Stanley conducted the service, and
on the following Sunday he also preached a funeral
sermon in the Abbey, from which we make the following-
extra ct : —

" Of him who is thus laid to rest, if of any one of
our time, it may be said that he followed truth with a
zeal as sanctified as ever fired the soul of a missionary,
and with a humility as child-like as ever subdued the
mind of a simple scholar. For discovering, confirm-
ing, rectifying his conclusions, there was no journey
too distant to undertake. Never did he think of his
own fame or name in comparison of the scientific results
which he sought to establish. From early youth to
extreme old age it was to him a solemn religious duty
to be incessantly learning, constantly growing, fearlessly
correcting his own mistakes, always ready to receivo
and reproduce from others that which he had not in

SIR CHARLES LYELL, HART. 17!>

himself. Science and religion for him not only were
not divorced, but were one and indivisible."

He was buried in the nave of the Abbe}-, where
a gravestone of fossil marble from Derbyshire bears the
following inscription : —

CHARLES LYELL,
Baronet, F.R.S.,

Author of

" The Principles of Geology."

Born at Kinnordy, in Forfarshire,

November 14, 1797.

Died in London,

February 22, 1875.

Throughout a Long and Laborious Life

He Sought the Means of Deciphering

The Fragmentary Records

Of the Earth's History,

In the Patient Investigation

Of the Present Order of Nature,

Enlarging the Boundaries of Knowledge,

And Leaving on Scientific Thought

An Enduring Influence.

" 0 Lord, How Great are Thy "Works,

And Thy Thoughts are very Deep."

Psalm xcii. 5.

A marble bust by Theed, after the original one by
Gibson, is placed near the grave.

Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who had frequent

180 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

opportunities of seeing Sir Charles Lyell in his latter
years, thus records her impressions: —

" The last of the elder generation of our great
men of science, Sir Charles Lyell leaves behind him
the memory of a character almost ideally representing
what such men should be ; so free from egotism,
vanity, or jealousy ; so ready to be pleased with every
innocent jest or amusement ; so ready to listen
patiently to the remarks of those infinitely below
his mental calibre ; and withal so affectionate and
tender of heart, that no child could be more simple :
and, on the other hand, so filled with reverent
enthusiasm for the glory and grandeur of the universe,
to whose study he devoted himself ; and so ready to
open his mind to each new truth, that no man could
better deserve the title of a true philosopher. Nor did
his philosophy, though it released him from some of
the bonds of early prejudice, ever lead him to renounce
those highest truths to which the lesser ones of science
lead up. It was his frequent observation that religious
sentiment deserved as much confidence as any other
faculty of our nature ; and in full faith and hope in
(rod and immortality, he passed calmly into the dark
valley of age and death."

To summarize the life and labours of Sir Charles
Lyell in their relationship to the science of geology
would be much the same thing as sketching the develop-
ment of the modern British school of the same science
during more than the past half century. The task
to which he devoted his greatest powers and noblest
energies was that of establishing the principles of the

SIR CHARLES LYELL, BART. 181

science of geology on a sound and philosophical basis.
His guiding star pointed to the uniformity of the laws
of natnre — a belief which led him to argne that by
studying the changes which are being wrought upon
the surface of the earth by the silent action of forces
now in operation, we put ourselves in possession of a
key to the interpretation of those ancient records which
it is the special business of the geologist to decipher.

Prior to the death of Sir Charles Lyell, nearly all
the first generation of geologists had passed away —
Buckland, Conybeare, Sedgwick, Murchison, Phillips.
Prom the advent of the science knowledge has widened in
every direction ; larger views of nature and the universe
have gained belief everywhere, and geology has fully
shared in the general expansion. In this process it
cannot be questioned that no one had a greater share
than Sir Charles Lyell, for he was much more than
a mere geologist. He had a well- trained and scientific
mind, which enabled him to take large views of every
subject presented to his intellect, to see its various
bearings and its points of alliance or contrast with
other ranges of thought. All his work was done
leisurely, fully, and completely, in large books, and
not in fragments of essays and papers ; and every book
was absolutely finished up to the point which know-
ledge had reached when he put it forth.

Sir Charles, in spite of his great age and pre-
eminent scientific acquirements, was singularly open
to fresh accessions of knowledge and fresh generalisa-
tions from the increasing store of facts ; and it is no
light testimony to the original soundness of his views,

182 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

that they have easily admitted an assimilation of all
fresh discoveries and a re-adjustment to newly-accepted
theories. He was not only a keen investigator of
natural phenomena, he was also a shrewd observer
of human nature, and his interesting travels in America
are full of clever criticism and sagacious forecasts. His
mind, always fresh and open to new impressions, by
sympathy drew towards it and quickened the enthusiasm
of all who studied nature. Had he done nothing him-
self, he would have helped science on by the warmth
with which he hailed each new discovery. Professor
Hughes says, " How many a young geologist has been
braced up for new efforts by the encouraging words he
heard from Sir Charles, and how many a one has felt
exaggeration checked, and the faculty of seeing things
as they are, strengthened by a conversation with that
keen sifter of the true from the false ! "

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON.

his eminent geologist was born at
Tarraclale in Ross-shire, N.B., Feb-
ruary 19, 1792. He was the eldest
son of a gentleman of ancient
Highland family, and was de-
scended from a small clan or sept
which for many generations lived in
the west of the comity, furnishing
factors for some of the larger land-
holders, occupants of farms among
the western sea-lochs, and even occasionally a parish
minister, a doctor, or a schoolmaster. His father
Kenneth Mnrchison, educated as a medical man,
acquired a competent fortune in India, and while still
in the prime of life returned to Scotland, where
marrying he purchased the estate of Tarradale, on
which he settled for a few years as a resident Highland
landlord. At the age of seven, young Murchison was
sent to the Grammar School at Durham, where he
remained for a period of six years, during which time

183

184 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

he may be said to have received the only systematic
education he ever obtained. Being destined for the
army, he was next sent to the University of Edinburgh
for a few months, after which he was removed to the
Royal Military College at Great Marlow. With not
a little difficulty he succeeded in the rather indifferent
examinations of the time, and in 1807, being then only
fifteen years of age, he received a commission as ensign
in the 36th Regiment of Infantry. He joined the
army in the Peninsula under Lord Wellington, carried
the colours of his regiment and was present at the
actions of Roriea and Vimeiro, earning for himself the
reputation of an able officer. Many years afterwards
the Duke of Wellington said to him, " What, were you
that chubby-faced boy who held up the colours when I
halted the 36th after Yimeiro ? ' Subsequently under
Sir John Moore, he took part in the retreat to Corunna,
and took part in the final battle there. These six
months of active service formed the only part of his
military career in which he was exposed to the hardships
and dangers of actual warfare. After serving in Spain
and Portugal, he was removed to the staff of his
uncle — Sir Alexander Mackenzie — in Sicily. He also
served at the siege of Cadiz, and afterwards in Ireland
as a captain in the Enniskillen, or 9th Dragoons. The
defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo seeming to close the
prospect of advancement in the army, Murchison, after
eight years of service, quitted the military profession.
In the year 1815, he married the daughter of General
Francis Hugonen, of Nursted House, Hampshire, and
spent some time on the Continent, particularly in Italy,

Sir Roderick J. Murchison.

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. 187

where the cultivated tastes of his wife were of signal
influence in instigating and developing his future
pursuits. He threw himself with all the natural
enthusiasm of his nature into the study of antiquities
and art, and for the first time in his life enjoyed the
pleasure of intellectual knowledge.

Of this period of his life, Professor Greikie, in his
biography of Murchison, tells a circumstance which,
while doubtless authentic, is nevertheless very surprising.
Having given up one fixed employment, the ex-captain
of dragoons began to look out for another. After the
fashion of that day, he seriously thought of becoming
a clergyman. " I saw," he wrote himself, " that my
wife had been brought up to look after the poor, was a
good botanist, enjoyed a garden, and liked tranquillity ;
and as parsons then enjoyed a little hunting, shooting, and
fishing, without being railed at, I thought I might slide
into that sort of comfortable life." For those who knew
Murchison in after years, it is almost impossible to grasp
the idea that he might have become a country parson
instead of a geologist. However, this was fortunately
not to be. As already mentioned, the newly-married
couple went abroad. This arrangement fell in admirably
with the plans of Mrs. Murchison, who had sagaciously
seen that her husband would be more likely to break off
from his useless life at home if he were thrown among
a new set of acquaintances and piu*suits on the Con-
tinent. She resolved to approach him at first from the
side of art. They posted slowly through France,
examining the picture galleries en route, spending the
summer in Switzerland and the winter in Genoa, whence

188 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

in the spring of 1817 they departed for Rome. By this
time he had become a confirmed dilettante, and his
copious notes on pictures and works of art show that
he was most enthusiastic and active in his new-found
occupation. His criticisms on the works of the great
Italian masters alternate with observations on the Forum,
the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the baths of Caracalla, and
the Grotto of Egeria, and with anecdotes of Canova,
whose acquaintance he made. In these two years he was
sowing seed which would bear fruit afterwards. Through
art he owed his first introduction to an intellectual life ;
it was not art which was to be his future stimulus, but
it was for him the starting-point of a new career, and it
was the first step in the direction of the work and of
the honours which he was to achieve. Mrs. Murchison
had gained the first victory in her campaign, but it was
for a time obscured by intervening defeats.

On their return from Italy they discovered that the
Tarradale Estate had been sold, and they had no alterna-
tive but to take up their abode in an old mansion at
Barnard Castle. The only recreation for him here was
in the sports of the field, into which Murchison threw
himself with his usual indomitable energy. His wife
endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to direct his mind into
the study of botany and mineralogy, and for some time
he enjoyed the reputation of having the finest stud and
being one of the hardest riders in the country. How
this period of his life closed will be best told in his own
words, written forty years afterwards.

" As time rolled on I got blasi and tired of all fox-
hunting life. In the summer following the hunting

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. L89

season of 1822 — 23, when revisiting my old frieixl
Morritt of Rokeb}r, I fell in with Sir Humphry Davy,

and experienced much gratification in his lively illustra-
tions of great physical truths. As Ave shot partridges
together in the morning, I perceived that a man might
pursue philosophy without abandoning field sports ; and
Davy, seeing that I had already made observations on
the Alps and Apennines, independently of my anti-
quarian rambles, encouraged me to come to London and
set to at science, by attending at lectures on chemistry,
&c. As my wife naturally backed up this advice, and
Sir Humphry Davy said he woidd soon get me into the
Royal Society, I was fairly and easily booked."

The enthusiastic fox-hunter then abandoned sport,
and casi in his lot with men of science.* He entered
upon his new life by attending the lectures at the Royal
Institution, among which was a course of geology.
From the Institution named he was led to meetings of
the Geological Society, " then held in little rooms in
Bedford-street, Covent Garden ; a society founded in
1807, and then composed of a small but most brilliant

* Sir Roderick used to tell an interesting anecdote
of the beginning of his scientific career. He was
attending the lectures of Dr. Brande, when one day the
lecturer's place was taken in his absence by a pale thin
lad, his assistant, who gave the lecture and experiments
in so admirable a manner as to be received at the end
with a hearty round of applause. The name of the
assistant was Michael Faraday, and this was his first
public appearance.

190 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

body of orators and philosophers, and in which he was
destined to take a most important part for the next half-
century. Professor Sedgwick says that the " Geological
Society of London was, in its early days, composed of
robust, joyous, and independent spirits, who toiled well
in the field, and did battle and cuffed opinions with
much spirit and great good will ; for they had one great
object before them — the promotion of true knowledge —
and not one of them was deeply committed to any
sj-stem of opinions." The same author also speaks of
" the joyous meetings, and of the generous, unselfish,
and truth-loving spirit that glowed throughout the whole
body."

Such was the peculiar condition of " geological science
at the time, that a great work could be done by a man
with a quick eye, a good judgment, a keen notion of
what had already been done, and a stout pair of legs."
Murchison possessed all these advantages, and in addition
an orderly and methodical habit, which would have
insured success in most walks in life.

Before proceeding further, let us briefly survey the
position of geological science previous to this time. At
the commencement of the present century British geo-
logists were divided into two hostile parties, the one
being composed of the followers of Hutton, of Edin-
burgh, and also known as Yulcanists or Plutonists;
the others the followers of Werner, the eminent
mineralogist of Frieburg, generally termed Neptuuists.

Hutton's opinion was that the past history of the
earth is to be accounted for by an appeal to existing
causes, that the continents were first gradually destroyed

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. 19J

by aqueous denudation, and that out of their ruins were
slowly accumulated new continents, to be elevated in
their turn by violent convulsions. Thus there would
be periods of repose alternating with periods of dis-
turbance, one of each constituting a cycle of change.
He held that the flow of the rivers, the dasli of the
rain, the destructive action of the frost, and all the
other agents of changes going on at the present time,
were the causes of those which have taken place in
the earth, in all the time past of which evidence is
before the geologist.

" I do not pretend," wrote Hutton, " to describe the
beginning of things ; I take things such as I find them
at present, and from these I reason with regard to that
which must have been." These views, adopted subse-
quently by Lyell and his followers, did not take into
account either the whence or the whither, either the
beginning or end of the earth. They constitute the
essence of what Professor Huxley terms the uniformi-
tarian doctrine ; and be it remarked that this section
of the Huttonians disbelieves in the doctrine of alternate
periods of repose and convulsion, which is held by
another section, termed by Professor Huxley the
catastmphic.

On the other hand, Werner taught that the earth
"had been originally covered by the ocean, in which
the materials of the minerals were dissolved ; but < >f
this ocean he imagined that the various rocks were
precipitated in the same order in which he found those
of Saxony to lie. Hence, on the retirement of the
ocean, certain universal formations spread over the

192 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

surface of the globe, and assumed at the surface various
irregular shapes as they consolidated." The important
principle which he enunciated was, that the rocks
lay in a certain order, and that they therefore had
been deposited at successive times.

When the chemical participation theory was rapidly
passing away in favour of the Huttonian views, Mur-
chison was abandoning his sporting proclivities, and
bracing himself for the life of science, in which after-
wards he so distinguished himself. The Wernerian
theory had indeed received its defeat from the researches
of "William Smith, " the father of English geology,"
as he was called. His system of geological classifica-
tion was rapidly applied to very nearly all the countries
of Europe. Every year now tended to broaden the
base of the infant science of geology, and multiplied
its details. The rocks to which William Smith paid
most attention were those now known as the Secondary,
or Mesozoic rocks.

With regard to the strata newer than these, so far
back as 1766, Grustavus Brauder had figured an admir-
able series of shells foimd in the Eocenes of Hamp-
shire ; and at the beginning of the present century
in France the labours of Baron Cuvier, and others, had
raised from the dead, so to speak, the extraordinary
group of animals living in Eocene France. In Grer-
many, Groldfuss had been eagerly working at the
animals found in caves ; and his success had induced
Buckland to explore the hyaena den of Kirkdale, and
to ransack the other caverns of this country. When
the principle of the classification by fossils was fully

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. 193

recognized, it was seen that the strata were divisible
into three great groups characterized by certain per-
sistent forms of animal and vegetable life, inlo Primary
or Palaeozoic, Secondary or Mesozoic, and Tertiary or
Ivainozoic. The fauna and flora of the first being
much less like the productions now on the earth than
the second, and each being defined from the other
by great physical breaks, during which continents
had been submerged, and the depths of the sea had
become dry land.

It thus happened that when Murchison first applied
himself to the study of geology as the science of his
life, the Tertiary rocks were known to occupy the
eastern parts of England as far as the chalk ; the
Secondary rocks extended over the whole area from the
chalk downs westward to the line of the coal-measures;
while the Primary swept in a broad band obliquely
through England and into Wales, being represented by
the coal-measures and " Old Eed Sandstone." Below
these lay a geological terra incognita, embracing the
hilly districts of Wales and Cumberland and the High-
lands of Scotland, and termed, for want of a better
name, from its grey colour, Graywacke. It is obvious
that in this direction Murchison might expect greater
success than in any other, for the Tertiary strata
required a knowledge of the living forms which he did
not possess, and the Secondary were already explored.

"Engaged in the fascinating pursuit of the new
science were heroes as noble and knightly as the
fellowship of Arthur's Table Pound. There was the
eloquent, active, and humorous Buckland, fresh from

o

194 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

his caves, ready to pick a bone with any one, posting
to and fro whenever he heard of any new find, and
breaking the monotony of Oxford lectures by a ride
across country with his students, or by stamping the
memory of Oxford or Kimmeridge clay in their minds
by leading them into quagmires. There were the
eagle-eyed Sedgwick, full of enthusiasm and not less
ready for the fray ; Wollaston, stern in his search for
truth ; the cautious Warburton ; the hasty Fitton ;
the critical Conybeare ; the shrewd Leonard Horner,
and others. They were men for the most part of
wealth and position, and with them were associated
the most distinguished philosophers of the time,
Whewell, Davy, Stokes, and others. All these were
men of wide and liberal minds, and naturally would
open to Murchison the society for which he was by
his own tastes peculiarly fitted. He could moreover
follow his new pursuit without sacrificing his out-door
exercises."*

He entered eagerly and yet with method into the
career before him. He first set himself to master
what books had to tell him of the rocks, and then he
proceeded on a tour along the south coast with his
wife, whom he left at Lyme Regis, to work quietly
at the fossils. He got as far west as Cornwall, where
he first saw the rocks of which he and Sedgwick
were afterwards to be the historians. On his return
he wrote his first scientific paper on the district
immediately round Nursted, which proved his

* Edinburgh Eeview, 1875.

siK RODERICK J. MUKCRISON. 195

capacity as an observer. Soon afterwards he was
elected one of the honorary secretaries of the Geo-
logical Society. "Lyell, being then a law student
with chambers in the Temple, could only devote a
portion of his time to our science, and was glad to
make way as secretary for one who, like myself,
had nothing else to do but think and dream of geology,
and work hard to get on in my new vocation." In
1826 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society,
not on account of his scientific work, but because he
was an independent gentleman with scientific tastes,
and with time and money to gratify them. In those
days the Royal Society wras almost as much an aristo-
cratic as a scientific distinction. " This," he wrote
afterwards, " was perhaps the happiest period of my
life. I had shaken off the vanities of the fashionable
world to a good extent, wras less anxious to know
titled folks and leading sportsmen, was free of all the
care and expense of a stable full of horses, and had
taken to a career in which excitement in the field
carried with it occupation, amusement, and possibly
reputation."

The summer following was spent in settling the age
of the coal-field of Brora, for which he prepared
himself by an extensive survey of the Yorkshire
Oolites, during which he made the friendship of
Professor Phillips, and his uncle William Smith. In
after years, Phillips often recurred to their first
meeting, and told how enthusiastic and methodical
Murchison was, and how in their boating and walking
he was led to see clearly, "that strata must alone be

196 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

identified with their fossils." Being possessed with
this knowledge, he had no difficulty in proving, in a
comprehensive Memoir, that the coal of Brora belongs
to the same Oolitic group of rocks as those of York-
shire. To his meeting with Phillips and Smith may
fairly be assigned his first mastery of the principles of
geological classification, which he afterwards used with
such important results in the interpretation of the
Silurian, Devonian, and Permian rocks.

By the time Murchison had been three years at work
as a practical geologist, he had not only mastered what
was then known of the rocks of Great Britain, but he
had added to the general stock of knowledge by his
expeditions into Scotland. He had become one of the
leading members of the Geological Society, and one of
the most ardent and promising geologists of the day.
It was only natural that he should turn his newly-
acquired knowledge into account by similar expeditions
on the Continent. Accordingly, in the winter of
1828-29, we find him arranging the first of the
journeys which occupied him for the best part of the
next three years, the ground explored extending
through France to the shores of the Adriatic on the
one hand, and through Rhineland and Austria into
Hungary on the other. In this expedition he was
accompanied a certain way by Lyell. In June follow-
ing, Murchison, together with Professor Sedgwick again
visited the twisted and broken strata which compose the
Alps. They passed by Bonn and Grottingen, then
through Dresden to the Carinthian Alps, where they
were received bv the Archduke John, " the most scien-

silt RODERICK J. MXJRCHISON. 197

tific prince in Europe." From thence they visited
Switzerland, ultimately returning to record their
observations in four Memoirs, which " are models of
rapid generalization and of keen and quick observa-
tion."

It was not long before Murchison again set out for
the Continent, partly to compare the fossils which he had
obtained in Grermany with those of the French collec-
tions, and partly " to frequent the society of scientific
friends." From Humboldt, who then happened to be
in Paris, he gained a considerable amount of information
as to the geological structure of the districts which were
the scenes of his travels.

In 1831 he was elected President of the Geological
Society, a dignity which he honourably earned by the
hard work of previous years. The debates of the Society
during his term of office were among the most brilliant
in London, and the audiences which attended them
included most of the eminent men of science in London.

He was no sooner installed as President, than, at the
instigation of Buckland, he set himself to work on the
solution of the problem offered by the rocks which cov< r
the greater part of Wales, then known obscurely as
Grraywacke. The important results of this resolution
are now matters of scientific history. In his expedition
he laid under contribution stores of knowledge accumu-
lated by local observers, which were freely placed at his
service. To one of these — the Rev. T. T. Lewis, of
Aymestry — he acknowledged himself indebted "for
much of his knowledge of the rocks and fossils of the
Upper Silurian Series, for that gentleman had already

198 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

made out the arrangement of the rocks in this district,
and recognized their characteristic fossils before Mur-
chison had begun to study the subject."

The seven succeeding years were chieffy devoted to
the mapping of these newly-classified rocks, for which
Murchison proposed the name of Silurian, from his
having first of all worked at them in the country of
the Silures,* and in 1838 the results of his labours ap-
peared in a magnificent volume entitled " The Silurian
System," and which contained, in addition to almost
learned and comprehensive text, a geological map and
a series of plates of fossils, which at once established his
reputation as one of the first geologists in Europe.

In this great work the author freely availed himself
of the assistance of his friends, and in it the esj)ecial
knowledge required for the interpretation and descrip-
tion of the fossil remains was contributed by the
leading paleontologists of the day. It was a complete
work, designed and carried out in the most methodical
manner, exactly what might have been expected from
such an energetic man of business as the author was.
Agassiz described the fishes, Sowerby and Lonsdale the
corals and shells, Broderip and Phillips, Milne-
Edwards, and others, assisted in various important

* Siluria means simply, a district on the borders of
England and Wales, which was formerly inhabited by
a tribe of ancient Britons, whom Eoman authors speak
of under the name of Silures. Shropshire and Hereford-
shire, Montgomeryshire and Eadnorshire, may be taken
as the main part of this district.

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. U)9

departments. The work was appropriately dedicated to
his friend and fellow-traveller Sedgwick. Before the
publication of this truly great work, these Gray \va eke
rocks had generally been looked upon as a geological
chaos, but Murchison had now succeeded in mapping
off the order of their upper divisions, and in revealing
to his readers a series of changes in the fossil groups
of life, analogous to those which William Smith had
proved to exist in the secondary rocks. He had.
moreover, traced the flows of lava and basalt, and the
sheet of volcanic ash to the sites from which they were
poured forth ; and he had proved to what a thickness
the volcanic detritus had spread over the ancient
Silurian Sea.

Before the " Silurian System " was well out of his
hands, Murchison, in conjunction with Sedgwick, deter-
mined to make out the history of the rocks of Devon-
shire and Cornwall. Their labours resulted in the
proof that the massive slate rocks of the south-west of
England, and the irregular fossil coral reefs at Torquay,
Plymouth, and elsewhere, formed part of a group of
strata below the coal measures and later than the
Silurians.

After a hasty, but most successful tour in France,
Murchison determined to employ himself in an under-
taking more serious than anything he had previously
done. This was to strike across the Russian empire to
the Urals, and his plan was welcomed by the Russian
Government with promises of support. In the spring
of 1841, accompanied by M. de Verneuil, he bent his
steps towards the Neva. The Emperor himself took

200 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

considerable interest in the expedition, and from that
time forward was numbered amongst Murchisons
illustrious friends. On being joined by Count von
Keyserling, deputed by the Russian Government to
attach himself to the expedition, they spent the next
five months in exploring Central and Southern Russia,
a work full of incident, the results of which were
subsequently detailed in " Russia and the Ural Moun-
tains"; a costly and elaborate work, in which are treated
not only the rocks of Russia, but also those of Scandi-
navia. His scientific merit was, through the produc-
tion of this work, now so thoroughly recognized
abroad, that it could no longer be ignored at home ;
and accordingly in 1846 he received the honour of
knighthood in consideration of his distinguished
services. Three years later he obtained the still higher
honour of the Copley Medal, from the Royal Society.

Murchison had now done the main g-eolo^ical
work of his life. There only remained to hiin the
consolidation of his conquests, and the application
of his classification to other regions. In 1854 the
first octavo edition of his popular work, " Siluria,"
appeared, in which, as before, he availed himself
of the co-operation of all the best men in their
respective departments.

For thirty years Sir Roderick had been free from
the cares of public duty. It was now his fate to
be appointed Director-general of the Geological
Survey of Great Britain, and of the School of Mines ;
a position which he held till his death, to the great
advantage of the public service. The energy and

SIR RODERICK J. MURCHISON. 201

business-like qualities of the new director-general
at once made themselves felt in the order and method
by which the survey was conducted, as well as in
the uniform system of the publication of the memoirs,
and the arrangement of the collections. His high
social position and personal influence with the
Ministry, gave a prestige to the department which
it had not possessed before, and prevented its dis-
memberment, or absorption into South Kensington.
By his rare tact he kept it during the whole of his
reign distinctively a school for geology and mining.

We must now refer to Murchison's connection with
the British Association. As head of the geological
and geographical sections, as general secretary, and
ultimately as president, he continued to fill a foremost
place in it till the end of his life.

His name also will ever be associated with the history
of exploration in Africa. While Livingstone, Burton,
Speke, Grant, Baker, and others were pursuing their
investigations, shut out from civilization, and thrown
upon their own resources, he in England was ever
looking after their interests with anxious solicitude.
Even when the wilds of Africa had closed over Living-
stone for years, he was the last to lose heart in the
success of the enterprise.

After the death of his wife in 1869, there is very
little left to record of Sir Eoderick Murchison. He
had reaped a rich harvest of honours. In 1860 he was
elected Corresponding Member of the French Institute ;
in 1864 he received the Wollaston Medal, and in 1866
he was created a baronet. In 1870 he founded, in

202 EMINENT NATURALISTS.

conjunction with the Government, the Murchison
Professorship of Greology in the University of Edin-
burgh, and in the winter of that year was struck down
by paralysis. He rallied, however, sufficiently to
prepare his last Address in 1871, but as the autumn
came round he gradually became worse, until he could
no longer speak, and on the 22nd of October he quietly
and almost imperceptibly passed away, at the ripe age
of seventy-nine.

The honours which Sir Roderick Murchison won are
a great testimony to the scientific enlightenment of the
age. We have crowned Science Queen, and all her
servants form her court and wear the title she bestows.
And truly, a scientific man earns his honours more
nobly, and wears them more honourably, than those who
win them in political controversy or on the field of
battle. In future years he will be known as one of the
pioneers of that new order of renown which is won by
fruitful service rather than by destructive deeds. The
scientific theories which he was unable to admit gained
a rapid victory over those to which he clung ; he was
therefore rather the great authority of a transition time
than the prophet of the future ; but the very fact that,
after a long life spent in the service of science, he went
to his grave as fidl of honours as of years, is one more
illustrious proof that science has, in latter days, opened
for every one who chooses to study it, a new way to
fame and historical renown.

Pardon & Sons, Printers, Who- Office Covrt, Fleet Street, London, K.C.

A BOOK FOR ALL INTERESTED IN THE EDUCATION OF THE

PEOPLE.

FREE PUBLIC LIBRARIES,

THEIR ORGANISATION,

USES AND MANAGEMENT.

With Illustrations of Free Library Buildings, Ground Plans,

&c. &c.

BY

THOMAS GKEENWOOD, F.E.G.S.

LONDON :

S I M PK I N, MARSHA LL, & C<

1886.

Price 2s. Qd. ; by Post, 2s. 9d.

A TOUR IN THE STATES AND CANADA:

OUT AND HOME IN SIX WEEKS.

AN ILLUSTRATED AND COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE.

Showing how all the Principal Sights in the Chief Cities of the States and Canada may be
seen with great comfort and a very small outlay of either money or time.

By THOMAS GREENWOOD, F.R.G.S.

London: L. UPCOTT GILL, 170 STRAND, W.C.

What the PRESS says :—

The Times, July 21, 1883.
The traveller who has only six weeks to spare will rind some useful hints in Mr. Green-
wood's unpretentious " Tour in the States and Canada ; Out and Home in Six Weeks."

The Christian World, May 31, 1883.
Visits to Europe are now accepted as well nigh a necessary part of the training of our
transatlantic cousins ; but there is no corresponding rush of Europeans to the New
World, although there is much unquestionably to be gained from such a visit, in the
infusion of new ideas, well calculated to rid our countrymen of narrow insular prejudices.
With a view to removing some of the barriers which stand in the way of such intercourse,
Mr. Thomas Greenwood, whose experience well qualifies him for the task, supplies under
the title " A Tour in the States and Canada," some practical directions, which will be
found very serviceable to those whose engagements compel them to limit their holiday
excursion to a period of six weeks. The volume is published by Mr. Upcott Gill, and it
would be difficult to find a work in which an equal amount of trustworthy information is
brought together in so readable a style.

London Daily <')tr<>nirle, June 12, 1S83.

A plain matter-of-fact narrative ; but one that will prove of essential service to anyone
wishing to make a similar tour. No point seems to be overlooked, and the author
touches on many phases of industrial life in America, as well as those of a holiday
character.

Scotsman, June 26, 1883.

Mr. Greenwood's "Tour in the States and Canada," should be found of considerable
use to those who propose to imitate his example, and spend six weeks in travelling
through the Eastern States and Canada. Mr. Greenwood, by presenting this inf orma-
tion in a condensed and convenient form, gives the intending traveller an opportunity of
"posting himself up" beforehand, and has besides prepared tables of tariffs and
distances that will be found of much use.

Nottingham Daily Guardian, June 22, 1
Contains a good deal of valuable information. The rais< of the little volume is

to show business men with six weeks to spare that the time cannot be more profitably
spent than in a visit to the New World, and this lie well succeeds in doing.

Bristol Daily Times and Mirror, June 2, 1883.
This is the result of a " run over to the States " for six weeks, and the name of the
author is a sufficient guarantee that while so limning he has read much, or at any rate
has succeeded in getting together a quantity of valuable and interesting information, for
the benefit of those who may follow him." The New World, as he says, is naturally a
source of great interest to most English people, but in the way of the many, who would
like to see for themselves the state of things across the Atlantic,' there are many obstacles,
in the removal of which this little book materially assists.

Publisher's Circular, July 16, 18S3.
It is a comprehensive and well-arranged little book, full of really useful matter.

North Cheshire Herald, June 2, 1883.

One of the most interesting publications we have perused for some time is on the above
subject, from the pen of Mr.Thomas Greenwood. Our readers have from time to time
had an opportunity of judging with what felicity Mr. Greenwood enlists their interest,
and retains their attention until he has disposed of his subject. So it will be found in
" A Tour in the States and Canada," being a practical guide to seeing the leading eeu*
of those places in six weeks — an accomplishment plainly demonstrated by the author.

Bath Herald, June 16, 1883.

These are days of rapid movement, and the writer of this neat little volume undertakes
to show his readers how to enjoy a six weeks' scamper through the States and Canada.
He very carefully describes the hotel system of America, and the expenses a tourist will

be put to, the things to be seen in the various towns, and gives a number of hints which
will be useful to the English visitor. He is quite right as to the interest and advantage
of a trip to America, however brief, and his pages will do as much to smooth difficulties
out of the way of the traveller as any volume we know.

Cook's Excursionist and Tourist A<lct rtisf-r, July 2, 1.SS3.
It is impossible to read the pages in Mr. Greenwood's book without being struck at the
pleasant, easy style in which they are written, and, at the same time, at the care and the
accuracy with which such important details as statistics are dealt with, where they come
in the path of the writer. Altogether, those who contemplate taking a tour in the States
will find this work an intelligent companion.

Literary World, July 6, 1883.
In this convenient little volume, the author endeavours to give practical and useful
information to the intending and possible traveller.

Stratford and South Essex Advertiser, June 8, 1SS3.

In a sketch of a mere holiday-run over a vast tract of country we cannot expect a
very profound study of the manners and customs of a people, but we may get a good deal
of useful information conveyed in a readable style. In this respect Mr. Greenwood is
decidedly successful.

Leamington Spa Courier, June 23, 18S3.

This work is designed for tourists in the "United States and Canada, and contains a
large fund of information, on such subjects as prices, distances, routes, hotel and
railway charges, which all persons visting America for the first time will find exceed ingly
useful. So far as we are aware, much of the information here given was not previously
accessible in a convenient form, and therefore the work merits special commendation.
Most of the chief features of all the large towns and cities of America are described, and
the scenery of the country on the chief railway routes is also touched upon. Altogether
it is a very useful handbook, and intending -visitors to America may consult it with
advantage.

The British Trade Journal, June 1, 1883.

This is an intelligent record of a brief sojourn in Greater Britain. The author visited
the leading cities in the States, kept his eyes and ears open, and gained a great deal of
information, which he has put together in a compact form. The chapters dealing with
the American manufacturing centres contain interesting matter.

The Warehouseman & Draper's Trade Journal, June 2, 1883.
In this little volume Mr. Greenwood has given the results of his experience during a
brief holiday in the United States and Canada, and has done so in a form specially useful
to those who may think of making a similar tour, as it contains a large amount of informa-
tion presented in an easy style, and a very practical manner. The book is well worth reading
by those who do not intend to cross the Atlantic.

The Country News and Chronicle [Stockport), 3\me 8, 1S83.
The work is written in a readable style, and contains in small compass a mass of
interesting information for those who have not yet had a voyage across the Atlantic.

The Cabinet Maker, June 1, 18S3.

A smart little volume .... It gives a most pleasant account of the States and Canada
as they present themselves to a "man on pleasure bent,'' who, by the way also ''had a
frugal mind." Mr. Greenwood has in this volume treated of things not usually observed
by the ordinary tourist, and his work is the more valuable in consequence.

The Field, July 14, 1883.
New York, Boston, Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit,
Chicago, Cincinnati, and Louisville, St. Louis and Pittsburg, the Oil Regions, Richmond,
Baltimore, "Washington, Philadelphia, and several manufacturing centres are here in turn
discussed in their superficial aspects, with advice on emigration, &c. The latter non-
descriptive part will probably be found of some use to those who want to know everything
before thev start.

The Queen, July 7, 1883.

In a moderate-sized volume the writer narrates his experience in a recent " run over the
States" giving his narrative that practical and suggestive turn which fits it to betaken in
hand as a general guide by any who may be meditating the same trip. His observations
on steamers, baggage, hotel life, railways, and kindred subjects are anion;;- the most useful
features of the book, and lie has instructive remarks to make concerning the principal
cities and places visited or likely to be visited by the ordinary excursionist across the
Atlantic.

The Colonies and India.

To a traveller who uses his eyes and exercises ordinary intelligence, as Mr. Greenwood
evidently did, a run to the States is a matter of vast importance, for it gives opportunity
for personal study of peoples and places, about which much that is wrong has been
written, mixed with much that is right. We can only hope that some day, when the
Canadian Pacific Railway is finished, Mr. Greenwood will tell us what there is to see on
the way to New "Westminster and Victoria, along the route of that railway.

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