Where there's a Will there's a Way ; or, Science
in the Cottage. By James Cash. (Hardwicke.)—This little volume contains some pleasant little sketches, interesting to all, but especially interesting to Lancashire readers, of men of humble station who have pursued with success the science of botany. Such was George Caley, who had to work like an ordinary farm-labourer, but who made himself scientifically acquainted with botany, and was sent out to Australia in the capacity of a collector, and was afterwards made superintendent of the Botanical Garden at St. Vincent. Such, too, was Edward Holmes, one of the founders of the Banksian Society of Manchester; and James Crowther, whose earnings (from sixteen to twenty shillings per week) did not permit him to buy a botanical book, and who had to earn the extra money for the purpose by acting as a luggage-porter. Poor Crowther seems to have been neglected by richer men, who might have recognised his services to botany. A man of blameless life, he was reduced in his old ago to a pittance of 3s. a week, which a society in Manchester gave him, and his death is said to have boon hastened by want of the necessaries of life. He had to sell, probably for mere trifles, the collections which were the joy of his life. We shall not be wrong in mentioning that there seems to be a humble man of science still alive who might well receive some recognition of his work, Mr. Thomas Edward, Curator of the Banff Museum. Mr. Edward seems to have suffered more than once the groat misfortune of poor collectors, the having to sell the results of his toils. He exhibited his first collec- tion at Aberdeen, but the result of the adventure was that ho had to sell it to pay expense. His second collection was sold to defray the expenses of illness, and a third has shared the same fate. Mr. Edward's own record of his life, given in a letter to the author, is a very pathetic story indeed.
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