culture considering his humble station in life. He was an ardent
student of natural history, and possessed a much more complete
knowledge of several sub-branches of that science than was to have been
looked for in a common working-man. One of the departments which he
specially studied was Entomology. In his leisure hours he was
accustomed to traverse the country searching the hedge-bottoms for
beetles and other insects, of which he formed a remarkably complete
collection; and the capture of a rare specimen was quite an event in
his life. In order more deliberately to study the habits of the bee
tribe, he had a number of hives constructed for the purpose of enabling
him to watch their proceedings without leaving his work; and the
pursuit was a source of the greatest pleasure to him. He was a lover
of all dumb creatures; his cottage was haunted by birds which flew in
and out at his door, and some of them became so tame as to hop up to
him and feed out of his hand. "Old Clement" was also a bit of a
mechanic, and such of his leisure moments as he did not devote to
insect-hunting, were employed in working a lathe of his own
construction, which he used to turn his bobbing on, and also in various
kinds of amateur mechanics.

His boy Joseph, like other poor men's sons, was early set to work. He
received very little education, and learnt only the merest rudiments of
reading and writing at the village school. The rest of his education
he gave to himself as he grew older. His father needed his help at the
loom, where he worked with him for some years; but, as handloom weaving
was gradually being driven out by improved mechanism, the father
prudently resolved to put his son to a better trade. They have a
saying in Cumberland that when the bairns reach a certain age, they are
thrown on to the house-rigg, and that those who stick on are made
thatchers of, while those who fall off are sent to St. Bees to be made
parsons of. Joseph must have been one of those that stuck on--at all
events his father decided to make him a thatcher, afterwards a slater,
and he worked at that trade for five years, between eighteen and
twenty-three.

The son, like the father, had a strong liking for mechanics, and as the
slating trade did not keep him in regular employment, especially in
winter time, he had plenty of opportunity for following the bent of his
inclinations. He made a friend of the village blacksmith, whose smithy
he was accusto