Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/626

608 But Edward's scientific labors drew toward a close. He had fought the fight of science on the one hand, and of poverty on the other, until his constitution, strained by exposure and battered by accidents, was no longer equal to the double struggle. In 1866 he was elected an associate to the Linnæan Society, one of the highest honors that science could confer upon him, and he. was shortly after also made a member of the Societies of Natural History at both Aberdeen and Glasgow. His biographer states that since then he has been able to do comparatively little for the advancement of his favorite study.

In June, 1875, Edward remarked: "As a last and only remaining source" (of subsistence), "I betook myself to my old and time-honored friend, a friend of fifty years' standing, who has never yet forsaken me, nor refused help to my body when weary, nor rest to my limbs



when tired—my well-worn cobbler's stool. And here I am still on the old boards, doing what little I can, with the aid of my well-worn kit, to maintain myself and my family; with the certainty that instead of my getting the better of the lapstone and leather, they will very soon get the better of me."

It remains only to add that, since the publication of Mr. Smiles's book, the queen has been moved to grant Thomas Edward a pension of fifty pounds a year. All will be glad of this; but we cannot forget that if this man had directed his genius to the work of war, with a tithe of the success he has achieved in enlarging our knowledge of Nature, his reward would have been far greater than it is now!