Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/100

74 miles in one direction and about six in another. These excursions also extended inland for about five or six miles. He had thus three distinct circuits (many views from which have been beautifully drawn by Mr. Reed as illustrations to the present volume), and although he only proceeded on one at a time, he generally managed to visit each district twice a week.

The use which he made of his time may be judged from the result of these excursions. His accumulation of natural objects became something extraordinary: in eight years he had preserved nearly 2000 specimens of living creatures collected in the neighbourhood of Banff—quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, crustacea, corals, sponges, and other objects—to say nothing of a large collection of carefully-dried plants, the whole of which he learnt to mount or preserve himself. It is melancholy to think how this fine collection was afterwards sacrificed! Yet so it was. Quitting his native place, as many a man has done, "to better himself," Edward left Banff for Aberdeen, taking with him the whole of his treasures, and made a painful effort to gain a livelihood by opening his museum to the public at a small charge for admission. But "the people of Aberdeen were not yet prepared for such an exhibition, especially as it had been the work of a poor man. He was candidly told that he had come several centuries too soon!"

Very few visitors came, and those who did come knew very little about Natural History. The receipts, never large, became less and less, until, to save his family from starvation and to pay off debts unavoidably and most unwillingly incurred, the whole collection was one day sold for the pitiful sum of £20 10s.! It was purchased by a Mr. Grant for a son who had a taste for Natural History, and the specimens were all removed to his house at Ferryhill. They were afterwards removed to St. Nicholas Street, where they were stored up in some damp and unsuitable room, and, being otherwise neglected, it is believed that the whole collection eventually went to ruin.

It must have been a bitter pang to part with it—the cherished result of years of toil and trouble; but stern necessity stared him in the face, and Edward was glad to receive even the paltry sum he did to free him from the terrible anxiety of living without an income. He quitted Aberdeen and returned to Banff to work at his old trade, and felt happier to be amongst his old friends than with the unsympathetic folks he had left behind him.