Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/613

Rh the French Academy; but—Thomas Edward—Tom Edward—who is he? and what business has his portrait in where we expect to find likenesses of only eminent scientific men?"

Well, the Thomas Edward whom we represent is in his proper place; and, if he has not been heard of before, he ought to have been. He was certainly not a King of England, but he has been a king and a hero in his own way; and we are glad to note that the Queen of England and Empress of India has recently honored herself by honoring him. Nor has Thomas Edward, like the great Jonathan, ever written on the will; but he is one of Nature's illustrations of it, and is himself a living treatise on the force of the will. And, although he is not a rich Anglo-French naturalist, the pet of the Academy, and applauded through Europe, he is nevertheless an eminent naturalist, who in an obscure Scotch town, without education, without means, without books, without encouragement, and without the acquaintance of men of science—a poor, day-laboring mechanic, with a large family—has done original work in science, of a quality and extent that would have carried half a dozen common men into the American Academy of Sciences, or the Royal Society of England. Thomas Edward fought his way alone, inspired and sustained by a love of Nature which with him was nothing less than an ungovernable passion; and, although working in long obscurity and bitter privation, and under difficulties that would have crushed the spirit of ordinary men, he has at length met the reward he so richly deserves, by falling into the hands of a gifted and admiring biographer. Well can he have waited, and much can he have suffered, who secures the genius of Mr. Smiles to w T rite his life while he is yet living, the skillful pencil of Reid to illustrate it, the aristocratic house of Murray to publish it in his native country, and the enterprise of the Harpers to reprint it in the United States. We make free use of Mr. Smiles's work in the following pages.

was the son of a hand-loom weaver, and was born near Aberdeen, in Scotland, in 1814. From his birth he was difficult to manage. His mother said of him that he was the worst child she had ever nursed. He was never a moment at rest, his feet and legs seemed to be set on springs. In babyhood he showed an impulse to leap from his mother's arms after flies. As soon as he began to walk he made friends with the cats and dogs, and would toddle out into the streets to cultivate the acquaintance of the hens, ducks, and geese, and would watch the pigs in a pen for hours. As he grew older he became a desperate rambler and runaway, and developed a