Many of his discoveries have already become facts in history, but a large proportion of them can never be known. His specimens were sent to others to be named, but many of them were never afterwards heard of. This was particularly the case with his shrimps, insects, zoophytes, corals, sponges, sea-slugs, worms, tunicata or leathern-bag molluscs, fossils, and plants. “Had any one,” he says, “taken pity on me in time (as has sometimes been done with others), and raised me from the dirt, I might have been able to name my own specimens, and thereby made my own discoveries known myself.”
Many of Edward’s friends told him that he should have extended his inquiries into Aberdeenshire and the northern counties; and that he should have explored the coasts of the Moray Firth in all directions. Others told him that he should have written and published much more than he did, or was ever able to do; and that he should have given many more facts to the public. The only reply that he gave to such advisers was, that he had neither the opportunity nor the means of doing so, having to work for his daily bread all the time that he was carrying on his researches.
AT LAST ACCREDITED.
He had another difficulty to contend with, besides his want of time and means. When he did publish what he had observed with his own eyes, and not in books through the eyes of others, his facts were often disputed by the higher class of Naturalists. He was under the impression that this arose from the circumstance that they had never been heard of before, and that they had now been brought to light by a poor shoemaker—a person of no standing whatever. This deterred him, in a great measure, from publishing his observations, as he did not like his veracity to be called in question. And it was not until years after, when others higher up the ladder of respectability had published the same facts, that his observations were accredited,—simply because they could no longer be denied.
Towards the close of his labours, Edward, on looking back, was himself surprised that in the midst of his difficulties—his want of learning, his want of time, his want of books—he should have been able to accomplish the little that he did. He had had so many obstructions to encounter. His bringing up as a child, and his want of school education, had been very much against him. Then he had begun to work for daily bread at six years old, and he had continued to labour incessantly for the rest of his life. Of course there was something much more than the mere manual labourer in him. His mind had risen above his daily occupation. For he had the soul of a true man. Above all, he loved Nature and Nature’s works.
SELF-RELIANCE.
We need not speak of his stern self-reliance and his indomitable perseverance. These were among the prominent features of his character. Of his courage, it is scarcely necessary to speak. When we think of his nightly wanderings, his trackings of birds for days together, his encounters with badgers and polecats, his climbing of rocks, and his rolling down cliffs in search of sea-birds, we cannot but think that he taxed his courage a great deal too much.
A great point with him, was his sobriety. For thirty-six years he never entered a public-house nor a dram shop. He was not a teetotaller. Sobriety was merely his habit. Some of his friends advised him to take “a wee drap whisky” with him on cold nights; but he never did. He himself believes that had he drunk whisky, he never could have stood the wet, the cold, and the privations to which he was exposed during so many years of his life. When he went out at night, his food consisted for the most part of plain oatmeal cakes; and his drink was the water from the nearest brook.
He never lost a moment of time. When his work for the day was over, he went out to the links or the fields with his supper of oatmeal cakes in his hand; and after the night had passed, he returned home in time for his next day’s work. He stuffed his birds, or prepared the cases for his collection, by the light of the fire. He was never a moment idle.
EDWARD’S FAMILY.