found time to
learn to write, to read some books, and to increase constantly his
knowledge of nature. In order to procure specimens for his collection,
he bought an old shot-gun for a sum equal to about a dollar,--such a
battered old piece that he had to tie the barrel to the stock with a
piece of string. A cow's horn served for his powder; he measured his
charge with a tobacco pipe, and carried his shot in a paper-bag. About
nine in the evening, carrying his supper with him, he would start out
and search the country round for animals and rare plants as long as he
could see; then eat his supper and lie down and sleep till the light
returned, when he would continue his hunting till it was time for work.
Many a fight he had in the darkness with badgers and pole-cats.

When he had thus been employed eight or nine years, his collection
contained two thousand specimens of animals and two thousand plants, all
nicely arranged in three hundred cases made with his own hands. Upon
this collection he had founded hopes of getting money upon which to
pursue his studies more extensively. So he took it to Aberdeen, six cart
loads in all, accompanied by the whole family,--wife and five children.
It needs scarcely to be said that his collection did not succeed, and he
was obliged to sell the fruit of nine years' labor for twenty pounds.
Nothing daunted, he returned to his cobbler's stall, and began again to
collect, occasionally encouraged by a neighboring naturalist, and
sometimes getting a little money for a rare specimen. Often he tried to
procure employment as a naturalist, but unsuccessfully, and as late as
1875 we find him writing thus:--

"As a last and only remaining resource, 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 although I am now
like a beast tethered to his pasture, with a portion of my faculties
somewhat impaired, I can still appreciate and admire as much as ever the
beauties and wonders of nature as exhibited in the incomparable works of
our adorable Creator."

These are cheerful words to come from an old man who has enriched the
science of his country by additions to its sources of knowledge. In
another letter, written a year or two since, he says:--

"Had the object of my life been money instead of nature, I have no
hesitation in sayin