time is that of Thomas Edward,
shoemaker and naturalist, to whom the Queen of England recently gave a
pension of fifty pounds a year. He was not a shoemaker who kept a shop
and gave out work to others, but actually worked at the bench from
childhood to old age, supporting a very large family on the eight or
nine or ten shillings a week that he earned. And yet we find him a
member of several societies of naturalists, the Linnaean Society among
others, and an honored pensioner of the Queen.

His father was a Scottish linen weaver, and for some time a private
soldier in a militia regiment which was called into active service
during the wars with Napoleon; and it was while the regiment was
stationed at an English sea-port that this remarkable child was born. A
few months after, when the Waterloo victory had given peace to Europe,
the regiment was ordered home and disbanded, and this family settled at
Aberdeen, where the father resumed his former occupation. Now the
peculiar character of Thomas Edward began to exhibit itself. He showed
an extraordinary fondness for animals, to the sore distress and torment
of his parents and their neighbors.

It was a taste purely natural, for not only was it not encouraged, it
was strongly discouraged by every one who could be supposed to have
influence over the boy. He disappeared one day when he was scarcely able
to walk, and when he had been gone for some hours he was found in a
pig-sty fast asleep, near a particularly savage sow and her pigs. As
soon as he could walk well enough his delight was to ramble along the
shore and into the country, gathering tadpoles, beetles, frogs, crabs,
mice, rats, and spiders, to the horror of his mother, to say nothing of
the neighbors, for these awful creatures escaped into houses near by and
appeared to the inmates at the most unexpected moments.

His parents scolded and whipped him, but his love of animal life was
unconquerable, and the only effect of opposing it was to make him more
cunning in its gratification. They tied the little fellow by his leg to
a table, but he drew the table up near the fire, burnt the rope in
halves, and was off for the fields. They hid his coat, but he took his
elder brother's coat and ran. Then they hid all his clothes, but he
slipped on an old petticoat and had another glorious day out of doors,
returning with a fever in his veins which brought him to death's door.

All these things, and many others like them, happene