But to descend from these perhaps too daring speculations, there is
another, and more human, source of interest about the animal who is
writhing feebly in the glass jar of salt water; for he is one of
the many curiosities which have been added to our fauna by that
humble hero Mr. Charles Peach, the self-taught naturalist, of whom,
as we walk on toward the rocks, something should be said, or rather
read; for Mr. Chambers, in an often-quoted passage from his
Edinburgh Journal, which I must have the pleasure of quoting once
again, has told the story better than we can tell it:-

"But who is that little intelligent-looking man in a faded naval
uniform, who is so invariably to be seen in a particular central
seat in this section? That, gentle reader, is perhaps one of the
most interesting men who attend the British Association. He is
only a private in the mounted guard (preventive service) at an
obscure part of the Cornwall coast, with four shillings a day, and
a wife and nine children, most of whose education he has himself to
conduct. He never tastes the luxuries which are so common in the
middle ranks of life, and even amongst a large portion of the
working classes. He has to mend with his own hands every sort of
thing that can break or wear in his house. Yet Mr. Peach is a
votary of Natural History; not a student of the science in books,
for he cannot afford books; but an investigator by sea and shore, a
collector of Zoophytes and Echinodermata - strange creatures, many
of which are as yet hardly known to man. These he collects,
preserves, and describes; and every year does he come up to the
British Association with a few novelties of this kind, accompanied
by illustrative papers and drawings: thus, under circumstances the
very opposite of those of such men as Lord Enniskillen, adding, in