commerce, could yet feel himself justified in devoting large
portions of his ever well-spent time to the fighting the battle of
the corallines against Parsons and the rest, and even in measuring
pens with Linne, the prince of naturalists.

There are those who can sympathise with the gallant old Scotch
officer mentioned by some writer on sea-weeds, who, desperately
wounded in the breach at Badajos, and a sharer in all the toils and
triumphs of the Peninsular war, could in his old age show a rare
sea-weed with as much triumph as his well-earned medals, and talk
over a tiny spore-capsule with as much zest as the records of
sieges and battles. Why not? That temper which made him a good
soldier may very well have made him a good naturalist also. The
late illustrious geologist, Sir Roderick Murchison, was also an old
Peninsular officer. I doubt not that with him, too, the
experiences of war may have helped to fit him for the studies of
peace. Certainly, the best naturalist, as far as logical acumen,
as well as earnest research, is concerned, whom England has ever
seen, was the Devonshire squire, Colonel George Montagu, of whom
the late E. Forbes well says, that "had he been educated a
physiologist" (and not, as he was, a soldier and a sportsman), "and
made the study of Nature his aim and not his amusement, his would
have been one of the greatest names in the whole range of British
science." I question, nevertheless, whether he would not have lost
more than he would have gained by a different training. It might
have made him a more learned systematizer; but would it have
quickened in him that "seeing" eye of the true soldier and
sportsman, which makes Montagu's descriptions indelible word-
pictures, instinct with life and truth? "There is no question,"
says E. Forbes, after bewailing the vagueness of most naturalists,