" THE LIFE OF THOMAS EDWARD."
THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—I think your reviewer, in his notice of Mr. Smiles's " Life of Thomas Edward," hardly does justice to the extraordinary precocity of that naturalist. Your reviewer, quoting, I presume, Mr. Smiles, says of Edward that "at sixty-two years of age he is still under the necessity of labouring at shoemaking." This statement, I imagine, requires him to have been born in 1814.
Now, not many lines before this it is said that " he was put into communication with such eminent naturalists as Mr. Spence Bate, Mr. Crouch [sic], Colonel Montagu, and the Rev. A. Nicoll Norman." But Colonel- Montagu, both on the strength of his obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine, and of his " memoir" by Mr. Cunnington in the Wiltshire Magazine, died in 1815. It would be interesting, then, to know more particularly how Edward, an infant under two years of age, in the North of Scotland, was put into communication with Montagu in South Devon.
" Crouch," I presume, is a misprint for " Couch," the name of an eminent Cornish ichthyologist, who died a few years since.— [Of course, Mr. Lowne is quite right. By a stupid lapse, the name of Colonel Montagu was used instead of that of Edward Newman ; and by a misprint, " Couch " became "Crouch."—En. Spectator.]
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