COLONEL MONTAGU.
Colonel George Montagu was an old soldier and sportsman, who had flourished in Devonshire some seventy years before. Living in the country and by the sea-shore, his attention was directed to the pursuit of Natural History. At first it was his hobby, and then it became his study. He observed birds carefully; this was natural to him as a sportsman. He published an Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds. But his range of study broadened. The sea-shore always presents a great attraction for Naturalists. The sea is a wonderful nursery of nature. The creatures that live in and upon it are so utterly different from those which we meet with by land. Then, everything connected with the ocean is full of wonder.
MONTAGU’S CLOSE OBSERVATION.
Colonel Montagu was an extraordinary observer. He was a man who possessed the seeing eye. He forgot nothing that he once clearly saw. He was one of the best Naturalists, so far as logical acumen and earnest research were concerned, that England has ever seen. The late Professor Forbes said of him that “had he been educated a physiologist, and made the study of Nature his aim and not his amusement, his would have been one of the greatest names in the whole range of British science. There is no question about the identity of any animal that Montagu described. . . . He was a forward-looking philosopher; he spoke of every creature as if one exceeding like it, and yet different from it, would be washed up by the waves next tide. Consequently his descriptions are permanent.” We might also say of Edward, that although comparatively uneducated, he possessed precisely the same qualities of observing and seeing. Nothing that once came under his eyes was forgotten. He remembered, and could describe fluently and vividly, the form, habits, and habitats of the immense variety of animals that came under his observation.
MONTAGU’S MIDGE.
Now, this Colonel Montagu had in 1808 discovered on the shore of South Devonshire the same Midge that Edward rediscovered in 1864 on the shore of the Moray Firth. Colonel Montagu had clearly and distinctly described the fish in the second volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society; but he had not given any figure of it. He named it the Silvery Gade (Gadus argenteolus). The Colonel passed away, and with him all further notice of his fish. It was never again observed until, fifty-six years later, it was rediscovered by Edward. Future writers on British fishes ignored it. They believed that Colonel Montagu had been mistaken, and had merely described the young of some species already known. Even Mr. Couch, the most accomplished ichthyologist of his time, had swept it out of his list of British fishes. But Montagu was too close an observer to be mistaken. As Professor Forbes had said of him—“There is no question about the identity of any animal that he described; consequently his descriptions are permanent.”
EDWARD ITS REDISCOVERER.
Hence the surprise of Mr. Couch on receiving from Edward the identical fish that had so long been lost. “There is one of your little fishes,” he said in his reply to Edward’s letter, “that I am satisfied about, and the history of which is a matter of much interest. You are well acquainted with the little Mackerel Midge, first made known by myself, and which has been denominated Couchia glauca by Thompson. But previously to this, Colonel Montagu had published an account of a species much like it, but differing in having only two barbels on the snout. It does not appear that any figure was given, but he speaks of them as occurring in Devonshire, where he lived. No one has seen a fish which answers to his description since that time—I suppose more than fifty years ago; and it has been judged that some mistake was made, especially as he never gave a notice of the Midge with four barbels. Yet Montagu was a good Naturalist, and a correct observer. He calls his fish Silvery Gade; for he wrote before Cuvier made these fishes into a new genus, termed Motella. But your fish answers closely to Montagu’s lost fish. When I inform you that Montagu gives the number of rays in the fins, you may judge how closely he examined this fish. When my History of British Fishes is ended, I intend to give a few as a supplement, and as ascertained too late to fall into the regular order. This little fish will find a place there, when I shall take care to mention your name as its rediscoverer.”
In a notice which Edward afterwards gave of the fish he observed: “I may mention that this genus of little fishes, designated with the appellation of Midges from their small size, and containing three species, are now authentically known to be inhabitants of the Moray Firth, all three, both young and old of each, having been procured here,—a circumstance which perhaps can be said of no other single district but our own. This, not so much for the lack of the fish themselves, as from the want of searchers for these things; for we cannot allow ourselves to think for a single moment, that they could be found in so widely distant localities as Cornwall, Belfast, Devon, and here, and not be met with at intermediate places. Such a thing appears to me to be one of those affairs called impossibilities. Let those then who live on the coast, and have time and a mind for these things, or whether they have time or not, if they have the Will,—let such, I say, look better about them, and I doubt not but they will find many of these little gems, as well as other rarities of a similar and kindred nature.”
MIDGES IN MORAY FIRTH.