Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/318

312 can scarcely imagine what he might have done had he been blessed with more sympathy in his chosen pursuit while young, and expressly educated for it. Nevertheless, though illiterate, lonely, and poor, he has accomplished a great work, and his life is perhaps as deserving of study on account of the faithfulness, patience, and self-denial that have characterized it, as for the direct contributions he has made to science, and these are by no means small. The son of a weaver who had become a militiaman in the days when the thought of Napoleon was a nightmare on men's minds, Thomas Edward was born in 1814, at Gosport, where his father was stationed. After the disembodiment of the militia, the Edwards returned to Kettle, the mother's native place; but work being hard to find there, they resolved after a short time to go to Aberdeen. Here, being close to the Inches (which some sixty years ago were green and beautiful), the child found an inexhaustible field for observation. Each new creature he made acquaintance with he yearned to catch and to make a pet of. Before he was four years of age, his mother had been involved in difficulties with the neighbors through his "vermin." He brought home beetles, tadpoles, frogs, stickle-backs, crabs, rats, newts, hedgehogs, horseleeches, and birds of many kinds.


 * The fishes and birds [Mr. Smiles says] were easily kept; but as there was no secure place for the puddocks, horse-leeches, rats, and such like — they usually made their escape into the adjoining houses, where they were by no means welcome guests. The neighbors complained of the venomous creatures which the young naturalist was continually bringing home. The horse-leeches crawled up their legs, and stuck to them, fetching blood; the puddocks and asks roamed about the floors; and the beetles, moles, and rats sought for holes wherever they could find them. The boy was expostulated with. His mother threw out all his horse-leeches, crabs, birds, and birds' nests; and he was strictly forbidden to bring such things into the house again. But it was of no use. The next time that he went out to play, he brought home as many "beasts" as before. He was then threatened with corporal punishment. But that very night he brought home a nest of young rats. He was then flogged. But it did him no good. The disease, if it might be so called, was so firmly rooted in him, as to be entirely beyond the power of outward appliances.

If Tom were sent a message it was odds but some bird or fine butterfly or other insect caught his eye and he was off in chase, forgetful of his charges. When set down to rock the cradle as his mother was filling her husband's pirns (reels) or otherwise engaged, he escaped, as if at the prompting of some irrepressible instinct. His father threatened to confine him to the house, and tried it, with no avail — for the sun shone out of doors and all creatures were abroad, as if whispering to Tom to come and join them; then he was actually tied, but he loosed his bands by dragging the heavy table close to the grate, and thus setting fire to them, and almost to the house itself, in the process. His clothes were next taken from him and carried by his father to his workshop; but Tom tied an old petticoat round him, and was off to the woods — the strangest spectacle! When he came home his father threatened to chain him. "But," replied Tom, "ye hinna a cooch" — for he had no notion of anything being chained but dogs. "Never mind," said his father, "I'll chain you."

But there was no need for that next day, nor the next. Tom's exposure in the petticoat had brought on a fever, which kept him down for three months, and the first thing he spoke of was his beasts. "Mother, where are my crabs and bandies that I brought home last night?" "Crabs and bandies," said she; "you're surely gaun gyte [become insane]; it's three months sin ye war oot." This passed the boy's comprehension. His next question was, "Has my father gotten the chains, yet?" "Na, laddie, nor winna; but ye mauna gang back to your auld places for beasts again." "But where's a' my things, mother?" "They're awa. The twa bottoms of broken bottles we found in the entry the day you fell ill were both thrown out." "And the shrew mouse you had in the boxie?" "Calton [the cat] took it." This set the boy crying, and in that state he fell asleep, and did not waken till late next morning, when he felt considerably better. He still continued, however, to make inquiries after his beasts.

His father after this was inclined to take a less severe view of his erratic ways, and would sometimes go for short waits, when the boy would assail him with questions that he could not answer about the rocks, and how they came there, and many other matters, Tom now formed parties of boys, with which he wandered in the woods or by the seashore; but he always found it possible to escape from them when anything special attracted his 