Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/620

602 little about the weather. His neighbors used to say, "It is a stormy night that keeps that man Edward in the house." He went out in fine, starlit nights, in moonlight nights, and in cold, drizzling nights. When it rained, he would look out for some hole in which he could get partial protection, and then watch for night-moving animals, insects, and birds: foxes, badgers, rats, weasels, polecats, mice, bats, owls, moths, and a host of other creatures of nocturnal habits, were the objects which he sought to observe in their ways or to obtain for his collections. It is comparatively easy to observe the habits of animals by day, but very difficult in the obscurity and darkness of night. Edward's circumstances drove him to this night-work, and soon made him expert in this peculiar line of observation. He often went out in winter, but his principal night-work was by moonlight, from spring to autumn. Seeing was of course difficult, but was greatly helped by the sounds of the midnight prowlers. In the course of a few years he learned to know all the beasts and birds of the district frequented by him. He knew the former by their barkings, gruntings, and various cries, and the latter he could identify even by the sounds of their wings when flying. He could tell the species and families of birds by their call notes as they flew by. He would watch the fights, greetings, pranks, predacious assaults, and peculiar ways, of the midnight roamers, between snatches of sleep, and thus extended and made much more accurate one of the obscurest branches of natural history. Mr. Edward had numerous adventures in these nocturnal excursions, which are vividly related by Mr. Smiles, who also goes into much detail to illustrate the perils, exposures, and privations, of this mode of life.

Mr. Edward continued his night-researches for about fifteen years, his excursions extending-for six or eight miles in different directions. He found many new specimens, and was particularly persistent in working at the birds which greatly abound in that region. He thus rapidly accumulated the objects for a collection, and after eight years had preserved nearly 2,000 specimens of living creatures found in the neighborhood of Banff, most of which consisted of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, Crustacea, star-fish, zoöphytes, corals, sponges, and other objects, together with an immense number of plants. He placed these in cases, which he made himself by the aid of a shoemaker's knife, a saw, and a hammer. He stuffed his own birds, and mounted all his own objects. Of course, he was not exempt from the accidents to which such material is exposed. He had deposited twenty boxes, containing 916 insects, in his garret, and when he went to fetch them he found they had been all eaten by the mice, the pins only remaining, with here and there a head, leg, or wing. On another occasion, having put 2,000 preserved plants in a box which was carefully placed out of harm's way, when he went to overhaul them he found that the cats had made their lair in the box and ruined the whole collection.