writings: 'The Efficacy of
Digitalis Applied to Scrofula,' 'On the Carpenter Bee (Apis
Centuncularis),' 'Domestic Usage and Economy in the Reign of
Elizabeth,' 'A Reply to a Query on Singular Fishes,' 'The Fabulous
Foundation of the Popedom' (abridged from Bernard), 'Migratory Birds
of the West of England,' 'God's Arrow against Atheism and
Irreligion,' 'A Dissertation on the Mermaid,' 'Observations on the
Natural History of the Chameleon,' 'Ditto on the Jewish and Christian
Sabbath Days,' 'Ditto on Cider-making and the Cultivation of Apple
Trees,' 'Contributions to a Classification of British Crustacea,'
'On Man as the Image of the Deity,' '_Daulias Advena_; or, the
Migrations of the Swallow Tribe.' We select these from the output of
one decade only. A little later the activity grows less
miscellaneous, and he is drifting upon his _magnum opus_, as the
titles indicate, 'Some Particulars of Rare Fishes found in Cornwall,'
'An Account of a Fish nearly allied to Hemiranphus,' 'On the
Occurrence of the Crustacean Scyllurus Arctus.'

He would announce these strange visitors--_sepia biserialis_, for an
instance--with no less eagerness than a journalist hails the advent
of a foreign potentate. He had invented, as we have said, an
apparatus on which he mounted them, with a jet of salt water that
played over their scales and kept fresh, as he maintained, the
delicate hues he copied from his water-colour box; with what success
let anybody judge who has studied the four great volumes wherein
these drawings survive, reproduced by lithography, and published by
subscription.

Immersed in these studies, Doctor Unonius found no leisure to think
of matrimony; and his friends and neighbours often took occasion to
deplore it, for he was an extremely personable man, fresh-coloured
and hale, of clean and regular habits, and, moreover, kind-hearted to
a fault. All Polpeor agreed that he needed a wife to look after him,
to protect him from being robbed; and Polpeor (to do it justice) did
not say this without knowledge. The good man could never be
persuaded that Polpeor folk--_his_ folk--were capable of doing him a
wrong; but certain it is that learnedly as he wrote 'On the
Cultivation of Apple Trees,' the fruit of his carefully tended
standards and espaliers seldom arrived at his own table.
They burgeoned, they bloomed; the blossom 'pitched,' as we say in the
West; the fruit swelled, ripened, and then--

Garden shows were rarities