p. 118Chapter V — Helps and Opportunities—Scientific Pursuits

“Neither the naked hand, nor the
understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is
accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not
less for the understanding than the
hand.”—Bacon.

“Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if
you seize her by the forelock you may hold her, but, if suffered
to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her
again.”—From the Latin.

Accident does very little towards
the production of any great result in life. Though
sometimes what is called “a happy hit” may be made by
a bold venture, the common highway of steady industry and
application is the only safe road to travel. It is said of
the landscape painter Wilson, that when he had nearly finished a
picture in a tame, correct manner, he would step back from it,
his pencil fixed at the end of a long stick, and after gazing
earnestly on the work, he would suddenly walk up and by a few
bold touches give a brilliant finish to the painting. But
it will not do for every one who would produce an effect, to
throw his brush at the canvas in the hope of producing a
picture. The capability of putting in these last vital
touches is acquired only by the labour of a life; and the
probability is, that the artist who has not carefully trained
himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a brilliant effect
at a dash, will only produce a blotch.

Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the
true worker. The greatest men are not those who
“despise the day of small things,” but those who
improve them the most carefully. Michael Angelo was one day
explaining to a visitor at his studio, what he had been doing at
a statue since his previous visit. “I have retouched
this part—polished that—softened this
feature—brought out that muscle—given some expression
to this lip, and more energy to that limb.”
“But these are trifles,” remarked the visitor.
“It may be so,” replied the sculptor, “but
recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no
trifle.” So it was said of Nicholas Poussin, the
painter, that the rule of his conduct was, that “whatever
was worth doing at all was worth doing well;” and when
asked, late in life, by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by what
means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of
Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, “Because I have
neglected nothing.”

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been
made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found
that there has really been very little that was accidental about
them. For the most part, these so-called accidents have
only been opportunities, carefully improved by genius. The
fall of the apple at Newton’s feet has often been quoted in
proof of the accidental character of some discoveries. But
Newton’s whole mind had already been devoted for years to
the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of
gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his
eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius could apprehend it,
and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then opening
to his sight. In like manner, the brilliantly-coloured
soap-bubbles blown from a common tobacco pipe—though
“trifles light as air” in most eyes—suggested
to Dr. Young his beautiful theory of “interferences,”
and led to his discovery relating to the diffraction of
light. Although great men are popularly supposed only to
deal with great things, men such as Newton and Young were ready
to detect the significance of the most familiar and simple facts;
their greatness consisting mainly in their wise interpretation of
them.

The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in
the intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb
says of the non-observant man, “He goes through the forest
and sees no firewood.” “The wise man’s
eyes are in his head,” says Solomon, “but the fool
walketh in darkness.” “Sir,” said
Johnson, on one occasion, to a fine gentleman just returned from
Italy, “some men will learn more in the Hampstead stage
than others in the tour of Europe.” It is the mind
that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gazers
observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the
very fibre of the phenomena presented to them, attentively noting
differences, making comparisons, and recognizing their underlying
idea. Many before Galileo had seen a suspended weight swing
before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the first to
detect the value of the fact. One of the vergers in the
cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung
from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a
youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea
of applying it to the measurement of time. Fifty years of
study and labour, however, elapsed, before he completed the
invention of his Pendulum,—the importance of which, in the
measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can
scarcely be overrated. In like manner, Galileo, having
casually heard that one Lippershey, a Dutch spectacle-maker, had
presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument by means of
which distant objects appeared nearer to the beholder, addressed
himself to the cause of such a phenomenon, which led to the
invention of the telescope, and proved the beginning of the
modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as these
could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a mere
passive listener.

While Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown was occupied in
studying the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving
one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed, near
which he lived, he was walking in his garden one dewy autumn
morning, when he saw a tiny spider’s net suspended across
his path. The idea immediately occurred to him, that a
bridge of iron ropes or chains might be constructed in like
manner, and the result was the invention of his Suspension
Bridge. So James Watt, when consulted about the mode of
carrying water by pipes under the Clyde, along the unequal bed of
the river, turned his attention one day to the shell of a lobster
presented at table; and from that model he invented an iron tube,
which, when laid down, was found effectually to answer the
purpose. Sir Isambert Brunel took his first lessons in
forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny shipworm: he saw how the
little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head,
first in one direction and then in another, till the archway was
complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind of
varnish; and by copying this work exactly on a large scale,
Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and
accomplish his great engineering work.

It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives
these apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling
a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled
Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at
not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought
New World was not far off. There is nothing so small that
it should remain forgotten; and no fact, however trivial, but may
prove useful in some way or other if carefully interpreted.
Who could have imagined that the famous “chalk cliffs of
Albion” had been built up by tiny insects—detected
only by the help of the microscope—of the same order of
creatures that have gemmed the sea with islands of coral!
And who that contemplates such extraordinary results, arising
from infinitely minute operations, will venture to question the
power of little things?

It is the close observation of little things which is the
secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every
pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of
small facts, made by successive generations of men, the little
bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them
growing at length into a mighty pyramid. Though many of
these facts and observations seemed in the first instance to have
but slight significance, they are all found to have their
eventual uses, and to fit into their proper places. Even
many speculations seemingly remote, turn out to be the basis of
results the most obviously practical. In the case of the
conic sections discovered by Apollonius Pergæus, twenty
centuries elapsed before they were made the basis of
astronomy—a science which enables the modern navigator to
steer his way through unknown seas and traces for him in the
heavens an unerring path to his appointed haven. And had
not mathematicians toiled for so long, and, to uninstructed
observers, apparently so fruitlessly, over the abstract relations
of lines and surfaces, it is probable that but few of our
mechanical inventions would have seen the light.

When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning
and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of
what use is it?” To which his reply was, “What
is the use of a child? It may become a man!”
When Galvani discovered that a frog’s leg twitched when
placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely have
been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could have
led to important results. Yet therein lay the germ of the
Electric Telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents
together, and, probably before many years have elapsed, will
“put a girdle round the globe.” So too, little
bits of stone and fossil, dug out of the earth, intelligently
interpreted, have issued in the science of geology and the
practical operations of mining, in which large capitals are
invested and vast numbers of persons profitably employed.

The gigantic machinery employed in pumping our mines, working
our mills and manufactures, and driving our steam-ships and
locomotives, in like manner depends for its supply of power upon
so slight an agency as little drops of water expanded by
heat,—that familiar agency called steam, which we see
issuing from that common tea-kettle spout, but which, when put up
within an ingeniously contrived mechanism, displays a force equal
to that of millions of horses, and contains a power to rebuke the
waves and set even the hurricane at defiance. The same
power at work within the bowels of the earth has been the cause
of those volcanoes and earthquakes which have played so mighty a
part in the history of the globe.

It is said that the Marquis of Worcester’s attention was
first accidentally directed to the subject of steam power, by the
tight cover of a vessel containing hot water having been blown
off before his eyes, when confined a prisoner in the Tower.
He published the result of his observations in his ‘Century
of Inventions,’ which formed a sort of text-book for
inquirers into the powers of steam for a time, until Savary,
Newcomen, and others, applying it to practical purposes, brought
the steam-engine to the state in which Watt found it when called
upon to repair a model of Newcomen’s engine, which belonged
to the University of Glasgow. This accidental circumstance
was an opportunity for Watt, which he was not slow to improve;
and it was the labour of his life to bring the steam-engine to
perfection.

This art of seizing opportunities and turning even accidents
to account, bending them to some purpose is a great secret of
success. Dr. Johnson has defined genius to be “a mind
of large general powers accidentally determined in some
particular direction.” Men who are resolved to find a
way for themselves, will always find opportunities enough; and if
they do not lie ready to their hand, they will make them.
It is not those who have enjoyed the advantages of colleges,
museums, and public galleries, that have accomplished the most
for science and art; nor have the greatest mechanics and
inventors been trained in mechanics’ institutes.
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of
invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the
school of difficulty. Some of the very best workmen have
had the most indifferent tools to work with. But it is not
tools that make the workman, but the trained skill and
perseverance of the man himself. Indeed it is proverbial
that the bad workman never yet had a good tool. Some one
asked Opie by what wonderful process he mixed his colours.
“I mix them with my brains, sir,” was his
reply. It is the same with every workman who would
excel. Ferguson made marvellous things—such as his
wooden clock, that accurately measured the hours—by means
of a common penknife, a tool in everybody’s hand; but then
everybody is not a Ferguson. A pan of water and two
thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black discovered latent
heat; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of pasteboard enabled
Newton to unfold the composition of light and the origin of
colours. An eminent foreign savant once called upon
Dr. Wollaston, and requested to be shown over his laboratories in
which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries,
when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an
old tea-tray on the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test
papers, a small balance, and a blowpipe, said, “There is
all the laboratory that I have!”

Stothard learnt the art of combining colours by closely
studying butterflies’ wings: he would often say that no one
knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and
a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
Bewick first practised drawing on the cottage walls of his native
village, which he covered with his sketches in chalk; and
Benjamin West made his first brushes out of the cat’s
tail. Ferguson laid himself down in the fields at night in
a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly bodies by means of a
thread with small beads on it stretched between his eye and the
stars. Franklin first robbed the thundercloud of its
lightning by means of a kite made with two cross sticks and a
silk handkerchief. Watt made his first model of the
condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist’s syringe,
used to inject the arteries previous to dissection. Gifford
worked his first problems in mathematics, when a cobbler’s
apprentice, upon small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth
for the purpose; whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first
calculated eclipses on his plough handle.

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with
opportunities or suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt
to take advantage of them. Professor Lee was attracted to
the study of Hebrew by finding a Bible in that tongue in a
synagogue, while working as a common carpenter at the repairs of
the benches. He became possessed with a desire to read the
book in the original, and, buying a cheap second-hand copy of a
Hebrew grammar, he set to work and learnt the language for
himself. As Edmund Stone said to the Duke of Argyle, in
answer to his grace’s inquiry how he, a poor
gardener’s boy, had contrived to be able to read
Newton’s Principia in Latin, “One needs only to know
the twenty-four letters of the alphabet in order to learn
everything else that one wishes.” Application and
perseverance, and the diligent improvement of opportunities, will
do the rest.

Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improvement in
every pursuit, and turned even accidents to account. Thus
it was in the discharge of his functions as a writer’s
apprentice that he first visited the Highlands, and formed those
friendships among the surviving heroes of 1745 which served to
lay the foundation of a large class of his works. Later in
life, when employed as quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light
Cavalry, he was accidentally disabled by the kick of a horse, and
confined for some time to his house; but Scott was a sworn enemy
to idleness, and he forthwith set his mind to work. In
three days he had composed the first canto of ‘The Lay of
the Last Minstrel,’ which he shortly after
finished,—his first great original work.

The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so many
gases, was accidentally drawn to the subject of chemistry through
his living in the neighbourhood of a brewery. When visiting
the place one day, he noted the peculiar appearances attending
the extinction of lighted chips in the gas floating over the
fermented liquor. He was forty years old at the time, and
knew nothing of chemistry. He consulted books to ascertain
the cause, but they told him little, for as yet nothing was known
on the subject. Then he began to experiment, with some rude
apparatus of his own contrivance. The curious results of
his first experiments led to others, which in his hands shortly
became the science of pneumatic chemistry. About the same
time, Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction in a
remote Swedish village; and he discovered several new gases, with
no more effective apparatus at his command than a few
apothecaries’ phials and pigs’ bladders.

Sir Humphry Davy, when an apothecary’s apprentice,
performed his first experiments with instruments of the rudest
description. He extemporised the greater part of them
himself, out of the motley materials which chance threw in his
way,—the pots and pans of the kitchen, and the phials and
vessels of his master’s surgery. It happened that a
French ship was wrecked off the Land’s End, and the surgeon
escaped, bearing with him his case of instruments, amongst which
was an old-fashioned glyster apparatus; this article he presented
to Davy, with whom he had become acquainted. The
apothecary’s apprentice received it with great exultation,
and forthwith employed it as a part of a pneumatic apparatus
which he contrived, afterwards using it to perform the duties of
an air-pump in one of his experiments on the nature and sources
of heat.

In like manner Professor Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy’s
scientific successor, made his first experiments in electricity
by means of an old bottle, while he was still a working
bookbinder. And it is a curious fact that Faraday was first
attracted to the study of chemistry by hearing one of Sir Humphry
Davy’s lectures on the subject at the Royal
Institution. A gentleman, who was a member, calling one day
at the shop where Faraday was employed in binding books, found
him poring over the article “Electricity” in an
Encyclopædia placed in his hands to bind. The
gentleman, having made inquiries, found that the young bookbinder
was curious about such subjects, and gave him an order of
admission to the Royal Institution, where he attended a course of
four lectures delivered by Sir Humphry. He took notes of
them, which he showed to the lecturer, who acknowledged their
scientific accuracy, and was surprised when informed of the
humble position of the reporter. Faraday then expressed his
desire to devote himself to the prosecution of chemical studies,
from which Sir Humphry at first endeavoured to dissuade him: but
the young man persisting, he was at length taken into the Royal
Institution as an assistant; and eventually the mantle of the
brilliant apothecary’s boy fell upon the worthy shoulders
of the equally brilliant bookbinder’s apprentice.

The words which Davy entered in his note-book, when about
twenty years of age, working in Dr. Beddoes’ laboratory at
Bristol, were eminently characteristic of him: “I have
neither riches, nor power, nor birth to recommend me; yet if I
live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind and my
friends, than if I had been born with all these
advantages.” Davy possessed the capability, as
Faraday does, of devoting the whole power of his mind to the
practical and experimental investigation of a subject in all its
bearings; and such a mind will rarely fail, by dint of mere
industry and patient thinking, in producing results of the
highest order. Coleridge said of Davy, “There is an
energy and elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on
and analyze all questions, pushing them to their legitimate
consequences. Every subject in Davy’s mind has the
principle of vitality. Living thoughts spring up like turf
under his feet.” Davy, on his part, said of
Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired, “With the
most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and
enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want of order,
precision, and regularity.”

The great Cuvier was a singularly accurate, careful, and
industrious observer. When a boy, he was attracted to the
subject of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon
which accidentally fell in his way. He at once proceeded to
copy the drawings, and to colour them after the descriptions
given in the text. While still at school, one of his
teachers made him a present of ‘Linnæus’s
System of Nature;’ and for more than ten years this
constituted his library of natural history. At eighteen he
was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near
Fécamp, in Normandy. Living close to the sea-shore,
he was brought face to face with the wonders of marine
life. Strolling along the sands one day, he observed a
stranded cuttlefish. He was attracted by the curious
object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the study of the
molluscæ, in the pursuit of which he achieved so
distinguished a reputation. He had no books to refer to,
excepting only the great book of Nature which lay open before
him. The study of the novel and interesting objects which
it daily presented to his eyes made a much deeper impression on
his mind than any written or engraved descriptions could possibly
have done. Three years thus passed, during which he
compared the living species of marine animals with the fossil
remains found in the neighbourhood, dissected the specimens of
marine life that came under his notice, and, by careful
observation, prepared the way for a complete reform in the
classification of the animal kingdom. About this time
Cuvier became known to the learned Abbé Teissier, who
wrote to Jussieu and other friends in Paris on the subject of the
young naturalist’s inquiries, in terms of such high
commendation, that Cuvier was requested to send some of his
papers to the Society of Natural History; and he was shortly
after appointed assistant-superintendent at the Jardin des
Plantes. In the letter written by Teissier to Jussieu,
introducing the young naturalist to his notice, he said,
“You remember that it was I who gave Delambre to the
Academy in another branch of science: this also will be a
Delambre.” We need scarcely add that the prediction
of Teissier was more than fulfilled.

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world so
much as purpose and persistent industry. To the feeble, the
sluggish and purposeless, the happiest accidents avail
nothing,—they pass them by, seeing no meaning in
them. But it is astonishing how much can be accomplished if
we are prompt to seize and improve the opportunities for action
and effort which are constantly presenting themselves. Watt
taught himself chemistry and mechanics while working at his trade
of a mathematical-instrument maker, at the same time that he was
learning German from a Swiss dyer. Stephenson taught
himself arithmetic and mensuration while working as an engineman
during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a few moments
in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he worked his
sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery
waggons. Dalton’s industry was the habit of his
life. He began from his boyhood, for he taught a little
village-school when he was only about twelve years
old,—keeping the school in winter, and working upon his
father’s farm in summer. He would sometimes urge
himself and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, though
bred a Quaker; and on one occasion, by his satisfactory solution
of a problem, he won as much as enabled him to buy a
winter’s store of candles. He continued his
meteorological observations until a day or two before he
died,—having made and recorded upwards of 200,000 in the
course of his life.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be
worked up into results of the greatest value. An hour in
every day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably
employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity to go far towards
mastering a science. It would make an ignorant man a
well-informed one in less than ten years. Time should not
be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of
something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle
cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. Mason Good
translated Lucretius while riding in his carriage in the streets
of London, going the round of his patients. Dr. Darwin
composed nearly all his works in the same way while driving about
in his “sulky” from house to house in the
country,—writing down his thoughts on little scraps of
paper, which he carried about with him for the purpose.
Hale wrote his ‘Contemplations’ while travelling on
circuit. Dr. Burney learnt French and Italian while
travelling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the
course of his profession. Kirke White learnt Greek while
walking to and from a lawyer’s office; and we personally
know a man of eminent position who learnt Latin and French while
going messages as an errand-boy in the streets of Manchester.

Daguesseau, one of the great Chancellors of France, by
carefully working up his odd bits of time, wrote a bulky and able
volume in the successive intervals of waiting for dinner, and
Madame de Genlis composed several of her charming volumes while
waiting for the princess to whom she gave her daily
lessons. Elihu Burritt attributed his first success in
self-improvement, not to genius, which he disclaimed, but simply
to the careful employment of those invaluable fragments of time,
called “odd moments.” While working and earning
his living as a blacksmith, he mastered some eighteen ancient and
modern languages, and twenty-two European dialects.

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that
inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford—“Pereunt
et imputantur”—the hours perish, and are laid to our
charge. Time is the only little fragment of Eternity that
belongs to man; and, like life, it can never be recalled.
“In the dissipation of worldly treasure,” says
Jackson of Exeter, “the frugality of the future may balance
the extravagance of the past; but who can say, ‘I will take
from minutes to-morrow to compensate for those I have lost
to-day’?” Melancthon noted down the time lost
by him, that he might thereby reanimate his industry, and not
lose an hour. An Italian scholar put over his door an
inscription intimating that whosoever remained there should join
in his labours. “We are afraid,” said some
visitors to Baxter, “that we break in upon your
time.” “To be sure you do,” replied the
disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the estate out of
which these great workers, and all other workers, formed that
rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they have left to their
successors.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their
undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery
they regarded as the price of success. Addison amassed as
much as three folios of manuscript materials before he began his
‘Spectator.’ Newton wrote his
‘Chronology’ fifteen times over before he was
satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his ‘Memoir’
nine times. Hale studied for many years at the rate of
sixteen hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law,
he would recreate himself with philosophy and the study of the
mathematics. Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while
preparing his ‘History of England.’
Montesquieu, speaking of one part of his writings, said to a
friend, “You will read it in a few hours; but I assure you
it has cost me so much labour that it has whitened my
hair.”

The practice of writing down thoughts and facts for the
purpose of holding them fast and preventing their escape into the
dim region of forgetfulness, has been much resorted to by
thoughtful and studious men. Lord Bacon left behind him
many manuscripts entitled “Sudden thoughts set down for
use.” Erskine made great extracts from Burke; and
Eldon copied Coke upon Littleton twice over with his own hand, so
that the book became, as it were, part of his own mind. The
late Dr. Pye Smith, when apprenticed to his father as a
bookbinder, was accustomed to make copious memoranda of all the
books he read, with extracts and criticisms. This
indomitable industry in collecting materials distinguished him
through life, his biographer describing him as “always at
work, always in advance, always accumulating.” These
note-books afterwards proved, like Richter’s
“quarries,” the great storehouse from which he drew
his illustrations.

The same practice characterized the eminent John Hunter, who
adopted it for the purpose of supplying the defects of memory;
and he was accustomed thus to illustrate the advantages which one
derives from putting one’s thoughts in writing: “It
resembles,” he said, “a tradesman taking stock,
without which he never knows either what he possesses or in what
he is deficient.” John Hunter—whose observation
was so keen that Abernethy was accustomed to speak of him as
“the Argus-eyed”—furnished an illustrious
example of the power of patient industry. He received
little or no education till he was about twenty years of age, and
it was with difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and
writing. He worked for some years as a common carpenter at
Glasgow, after which he joined his brother William, who had
settled in London as a lecturer and anatomical
demonstrator. John entered his dissecting-room as an
assistant, but soon shot ahead of his brother, partly by virtue
of his great natural ability, but mainly by reason of his patient
application and indefatigable industry. He was one of the
first in this country to devote himself assiduously to the study
of comparative anatomy, and the objects he dissected and
collected took the eminent Professor Owen no less than ten years
to arrange. The collection contains some twenty thousand
specimens, and is the most precious treasure of the kind that has
ever been accumulated by the industry of one man. Hunter
used to spend every morning from sunrise until eight
o’clock in his museum; and throughout the day he carried on
his extensive private practice, performed his laborious duties as
surgeon to St. George’s Hospital and deputy surgeon-general
to the army; delivered lectures to students, and superintended a
school of practical anatomy at his own house; finding leisure,
amidst all, for elaborate experiments on the animal economy, and
the composition of various works of great scientific
importance. To find time for this gigantic amount of work,
he allowed himself only four hours of sleep at night, and an hour
after dinner. When once asked what method he had adopted to
insure success in his undertakings, he replied, “My rule
is, deliberately to consider, before I commence, whether the
thing be practicable. If it be not practicable, I do not
attempt it. If it be practicable, I can accomplish it if I
give sufficient pains to it; and having begun, I never stop till
the thing is done. To this rule I owe all my
success.”

Hunter occupied a great deal of his time in collecting
definite facts respecting matters which, before his day, were
regarded as exceedingly trivial. Thus it was supposed by
many of his contemporaries that he was only wasting his time and
thought in studying so carefully as he did the growth of a
deer’s horn. But Hunter was impressed with the
conviction that no accurate knowledge of scientific facts is
without its value. By the study referred to, he learnt how
arteries accommodate themselves to circumstances, and enlarge as
occasion requires; and the knowledge thus acquired emboldened
him, in a case of aneurism in a branch artery, to tie the main
trunk where no surgeon before him had dared to tie it, and the
life of his patient was saved. Like many original men, he
worked for a long time as it were underground, digging and laying
foundations. He was a solitary and self-reliant genius,
holding on his course without the solace of sympathy or
approbation,—for but few of his contemporaries perceived
the ultimate object of his pursuits. But like all true
workers, he did not fail in securing his best reward—that
which depends less upon others than upon one’s
self—the approval of conscience, which in a right-minded
man invariably follows the honest and energetic performance of
duty.

Ambrose Paré, the great French surgeon, was another
illustrious instance of close observation, patient application,
and indefatigable perseverance. He was the son of a barber
at Laval, in Maine, where he was born in 1509. His parents
were too poor to send him to school, but they placed him as
foot-boy with the curé of the village, hoping that under
that learned man he might pick up an education for himself.
But the curé kept him so busily employed in grooming his
mule and in other menial offices that the boy found no time for
learning. While in his service, it happened that the
celebrated lithotomist, Cotot, came to Laval to operate on one of
the curé’s ecclesiastical brethren.
Paré was present at the operation, and was so much
interested by it that he is said to have from that time formed
the determination of devoting himself to the art of surgery.

Leaving the curé’s household service, Paré
apprenticed himself to a barber-surgeon named Vialot, under whom
he learnt to let blood, draw teeth, and perform the minor
operations. After four years’ experience of this
kind, he went to Paris to study at the school of anatomy and
surgery, meanwhile maintaining himself by his trade of a
barber. He afterwards succeeded in obtaining an appointment
as assistant at the Hôtel Dieu, where his conduct was so
exemplary, and his progress so marked, that the chief surgeon,
Goupil, entrusted him with the charge of the patients whom he
could not himself attend to. After the usual course of
instruction, Paré was admitted a master barber-surgeon,
and shortly after was appointed to a charge with the French army
under Montmorenci in Piedmont. Paré was not a man to
follow in the ordinary ruts of his profession, but brought the
resources of an ardent and original mind to bear upon his daily
work, diligently thinking out for himself the rationale of
diseases and their befitting remedies. Before his time the
wounded suffered much more at the hands of their surgeons than
they did at those of their enemies. To stop bleeding from
gunshot wounds, the barbarous expedient was resorted to of
dressing them with boiling oil. Hæmorrhage was also
stopped by searing the wounds with a red-hot iron; and when
amputation was necessary, it was performed with a red-hot
knife. At first Paré treated wounds according to the
approved methods; but, fortunately, on one occasion, running
short of boiling oil, he substituted a mild and emollient
application. He was in great fear all night lest he should
have done wrong in adopting this treatment; but was greatly
relieved next morning on finding his patients comparatively
comfortable, while those whose wounds had been treated in the
usual way were writhing in torment. Such was the casual
origin of one of Paré’s greatest improvements in the
treatment of gun-shot wounds; and he proceeded to adopt the
emollient treatment in all future cases. Another still more
important improvement was his employment of the ligature in tying
arteries to stop hæmorrhage, instead of the actual
cautery. Paré, however, met with the usual fate of
innovators and reformers. His practice was denounced by his
surgical brethren as dangerous, unprofessional, and empirical;
and the older surgeons banded themselves together to resist its
adoption. They reproached him for his want of education,
more especially for his ignorance of Latin and Greek; and they
assailed him with quotations from ancient writers, which he was
unable either to verify or refute. But the best answer to
his assailants was the success of his practice. The wounded
soldiers called out everywhere for Paré, and he was always
at their service: he tended them carefully and affectionately;
and he usually took leave of them with the words, “I have
dressed you; may God cure you.”

After three years’ active service as army-surgeon,
Paré returned to Paris with such a reputation that he was
at once appointed surgeon in ordinary to the King. When
Metz was besieged by the Spanish army, under Charles V., the
garrison suffered heavy loss, and the number of wounded was very
great. The surgeons were few and incompetent, and probably
slew more by their bad treatment than the Spaniards did by the
sword. The Duke of Guise, who commanded the garrison, wrote
to the King imploring him to send Paré to his help.
The courageous surgeon at once set out, and, after braving many
dangers (to use his own words, “d’estre pendu,
estranglé ou mis en pièces”), he succeeded in
passing the enemy’s lines, and entered Metz in
safety. The Duke, the generals, and the captains gave him
an affectionate welcome; while the soldiers, when they heard of
his arrival, cried, “We no longer fear dying of our wounds;
our friend is among us.” In the following year
Paré was in like manner with the besieged in the town of
Hesdin, which shortly fell before the Duke of Savoy, and he was
taken prisoner. But having succeeded in curing one of the
enemy’s chief officers of a serious wound, he was
discharged without ransom, and returned in safety to Paris.

The rest of his life was occupied in study, in
self-improvement, in piety, and in good deeds. Urged by
some of the most learned among his contemporaries, he placed on
record the results of his surgical experience, in twenty-eight
books, which were published by him at different times. His
writings are valuable and remarkable chiefly on account of the
great number of facts and cases contained in them, and the care
with which he avoids giving any directions resting merely upon
theory unsupported by observation. Paré continued,
though a Protestant, to hold the office of surgeon in ordinary to
the King; and during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew he owed his
life to the personal friendship of Charles IX., whom he had on
one occasion saved from the dangerous effects of a wound
inflicted by a clumsy surgeon in performing the operation of
venesection. Brantôme, in his
‘Mémoires,’ thus speaks of the King’s
rescue of Paré on the night of Saint
Bartholomew—“He sent to fetch him, and to remain
during the night in his chamber and wardrobe-room, commanding him
not to stir, and saying that it was not reasonable that a man who
had preserved the lives of so many people should himself be
massacred.” Thus Paré escaped the horrors of
that fearful night, which he survived for many years, and was
permitted to die in peace, full of age and honours.

Harvey was as indefatigable a labourer as any we have
named. He spent not less than eight long years of
investigation and research before he published his views of the
circulation of the blood. He repeated and verified his
experiments again and again, probably anticipating the opposition
he would have to encounter from the profession on making known
his discovery. The tract in which he at length announced
his views, was a most modest one,—but simple, perspicuous,
and conclusive. It was nevertheless received with ridicule,
as the utterance of a crack-brained impostor. For some
time, he did not make a single convert, and gained nothing but
contumely and abuse. He had called in question the revered
authority of the ancients; and it was even averred that his views
were calculated to subvert the authority of the Scriptures and
undermine the very foundations of morality and religion.
His little practice fell away, and he was left almost without a
friend. This lasted for some years, until the great truth,
held fast by Harvey amidst all his adversity, and which had
dropped into many thoughtful minds, gradually ripened by further
observation, and after a period of about twenty-five years, it
became generally recognised as an established scientific
truth.

The difficulties encountered by Dr. Jenner in promulgating and
establishing his discovery of vaccination as a preventive of
small-pox, were even greater than those of Harvey. Many,
before him, had witnessed the cow-pox, and had heard of the
report current among the milkmaids in Gloucestershire, that
whoever had taken that disease was secure against
small-pox. It was a trifling, vulgar rumour, supposed to
have no significance whatever; and no one had thought it worthy
of investigation, until it was accidentally brought under the
notice of Jenner. He was a youth, pursuing his studies at
Sodbury, when his attention was arrested by the casual
observation made by a country girl who came to his master’s
shop for advice. The small-pox was mentioned, when the girl
said, “I can’t take that disease, for I have had
cow-pox.” The observation immediately riveted
Jenner’s attention, and he forthwith set about inquiring
and making observations on the subject. His professional
friends, to whom he mentioned his views as to the prophylactic
virtues of cow-pox, laughed at him, and even threatened to expel
him from their society, if he persisted in harassing them with
the subject. In London he was so fortunate as to study
under John Hunter, to whom he communicated his views. The
advice of the great anatomist was thoroughly characteristic:
“Don’t think, but try; be patient, be
accurate.” Jenner’s courage was supported by
the advice, which conveyed to him the true art of philosophical
investigation. He went back to the country to practise his
profession and make observations and experiments, which he
continued to pursue for a period of twenty years. His faith
in his discovery was so implicit that he vaccinated his own son
on three several occasions. At length he published his
views in a quarto of about seventy pages, in which he gave the
details of twenty-three cases of successful vaccination of
individuals, to whom it was found afterwards impossible to
communicate the small-pox either by contagion or
inoculation. It was in 1798 that this treatise was
published; though he had been working out his ideas since the
year 1775, when they had begun to assume a definite form.

How was the discovery received? First with indifference,
then with active hostility. Jenner proceeded to London to
exhibit to the profession the process of vaccination and its
results; but not a single medical man could be induced to make
trial of it, and after fruitlessly waiting for nearly three
months, he returned to his native village. He was even
caricatured and abused for his attempt to
“bestialize” his species by the introduction into
their systems of diseased matter from the cow’s
udder. Vaccination was denounced from the pulpit as
“diabolical.” It was averred that vaccinated
children became “ox-faced,” that abscesses broke out
to “indicate sprouting horns,” and that the
countenance was gradually “transmuted into the visage of a
cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls.”
Vaccination, however, was a truth, and notwithstanding the
violence of the opposition, belief in it spread slowly. In
one village, where a gentleman tried to introduce the practice,
the first persons who permitted themselves to be vaccinated were
absolutely pelted and driven into their houses if they appeared
out of doors. Two ladies of title—Lady Ducie and the
Countess of Berkeley—to their honour be it
remembered—had the courage to vaccinate their children; and
the prejudices of the day were at once broken through. The
medical profession gradually came round, and there were several
who even sought to rob Dr. Jenner of the merit of the discovery,
when its importance came to be recognised. Jenner’s
cause at last triumphed, and he was publicly honoured and
rewarded. In his prosperity he was as modest as he had been
in his obscurity. He was invited to settle in London, and
told that he might command a practice of 10,000l. a
year. But his answer was, “No! In the morning
of my days I have sought the sequestered and lowly paths of
life—the valley, and not the mountain,—and now, in
the evening of my days, it is not meet for me to hold myself up
as an object for fortune and for fame.” During
Jenner’s own life-time the practice of vaccination became
adopted all over the civilized world; and when he died, his title
as a Benefactor of his kind was recognised far and wide.
Cuvier has said, “If vaccine were the only discovery of the
epoch, it would serve to render it illustrious for ever; yet it
knocked twenty times in vain at the doors of the
Academies.”

Not less patient, resolute, and persevering was Sir Charles
Bell in the prosecution of his discoveries relating to the
nervous system. Previous to his time, the most confused
notions prevailed as to the functions of the nerves, and this
branch of study was little more advanced than it had been in the
times of Democritus and Anaxagoras three thousand years
before. Sir Charles Bell, in the valuable series of papers
the publication of which was commenced in 1821, took an entirely
original view of the subject, based upon a long series of
careful, accurate, and oft-repeated experiments.
Elaborately tracing the development of the nervous system up from
the lowest order of animated being, to man—the lord of the
animal kingdom,—he displayed it, to use his own words,
“as plainly as if it were written in our
mother-tongue.” His discovery consisted in the fact,
that the spinal nerves are double in their function, and arise by
double roots from the spinal marrow,—volition being
conveyed by that part of the nerves springing from the one root,
and sensation by the other. The subject occupied the mind
of Sir Charles Bell for a period of forty years, when, in 1840,
he laid his last paper before the Royal Society. As in the
cases of Harvey and Jenner, when he had lived down the ridicule
and opposition with which his views were first received, and
their truth came to be recognised, numerous claims for priority
in making the discovery were set up at home and abroad.
Like them, too, he lost practice by the publication of his
papers; and he left it on record that, after every step in his
discovery, he was obliged to work harder than ever to preserve
his reputation as a practitioner. The great merits of Sir
Charles Bell were, however, at length fully recognised; and
Cuvier himself, when on his death-bed, finding his face distorted
and drawn to one side, pointed out the symptom to his attendants
as a proof of the correctness of Sir Charles Bell’s
theory.

An equally devoted pursuer of the same branch of science was
the late Dr. Marshall Hall, whose name posterity will rank with
those of Harvey, Hunter, Jenner, and Bell. During the whole
course of his long and useful life he was a most careful and
minute observer; and no fact, however apparently insignificant,
escaped his attention. His important discovery of the
diastaltic nervous system, by which his name will long be known
amongst scientific men, originated in an exceedingly simple
circumstance. When investigating the pneumonic circulation
in the Triton, the decapitated object lay upon the table; and on
separating the tail and accidentally pricking the external
integument, he observed that it moved with energy, and became
contorted into various forms. He had not touched a muscle
or a muscular nerve; what then was the nature of these
movements? The same phenomena had probably been often
observed before, but Dr. Hall was the first to apply himself
perseveringly to the investigation of their causes; and he
exclaimed on the occasion, “I will never rest satisfied
until I have found all this out, and made it clear.”
His attention to the subject was almost incessant; and it is
estimated that in the course of his life he devoted not less than
25,000 hours to its experimental and chemical
investigation. He was at the same time carrying on an
extensive private practice, and officiating as lecturer at St.
Thomas’s Hospital and other Medical Schools. It will
scarcely be credited that the paper in which he embodied his
discovery was rejected by the Royal Society, and was only
accepted after the lapse of seventeen years, when the truth of
his views had become acknowledged by scientific men both at home
and abroad.

The life of Sir William Herschel affords another remarkable
illustration of the force of perseverance in another branch of
science. His father was a poor German musician, who brought
up his four sons to the same calling. William came over to
England to seek his fortune, and he joined the band of the Durham
Militia, in which he played the oboe. The regiment was
lying at Doncaster, where Dr. Miller first became acquainted with
Herschel, having heard him perform a solo on the violin in a
surprising manner. The Doctor entered into conversation
with the youth, and was so pleased with him, that he urged him to
leave the militia and take up his residence at his house for a
time. Herschel did so, and while at Doncaster was
principally occupied in violin-playing at concerts, availing
himself of the advantages of Dr. Miller’s library to study
at his leisure hours. A new organ having been built for the
parish church of Halifax, an organist was advertised for, on
which Herschel applied for the office, and was selected.
Leading the wandering life of an artist, he was next attracted to
Bath, where he played in the Pump-room band, and also officiated
as organist in the Octagon chapel. Some recent discoveries
in astronomy having arrested his mind, and awakened in him a
powerful spirit of curiosity, he sought and obtained from a
friend the loan of a two-foot Gregorian telescope. So
fascinated was the poor musician by the science, that he even
thought of purchasing a telescope, but the price asked by the
London optician was so alarming, that he determined to make
one. Those who know what a reflecting telescope is, and the
skill which is required to prepare the concave metallic speculum
which forms the most important part of the apparatus, will be
able to form some idea of the difficulty of this
undertaking. Nevertheless, Herschel succeeded, after long
and painful labour, in completing a five-foot reflector, with
which he had the gratification of observing the ring and
satellites of Saturn. Not satisfied with his triumph, he
proceeded to make other instruments in succession, of seven, ten,
and even twenty feet. In constructing the seven-foot
reflector, he finished no fewer than two hundred specula before
he produced one that would bear any power that was applied to
it,—a striking instance of the persevering laboriousness of
the man. While gauging the heavens with his instruments, he
continued patiently to earn his bread by piping to the
fashionable frequenters of the Pump-room. So eager was he
in his astronomical observations, that he would steal away from
the room during an interval of the performance, give a little
turn at his telescope, and contentedly return to his oboe.
Thus working away, Herschel discovered the Georgium Sidus, the
orbit and rate of motion of which he carefully calculated, and
sent the result to the Royal Society; when the humble oboe player
found himself at once elevated from obscurity to fame. He
was shortly after appointed Astronomer Royal, and by the kindness
of George III. was placed in a position of honourable competency
for life. He bore his honours with the same meekness and
humility which had distinguished him in the days of his
obscurity. So gentle and patient, and withal so
distinguished and successful a follower of science under
difficulties, perhaps cannot be found in the entire history of
biography.

The career of William Smith, the father of English geology,
though perhaps less known, is not less interesting and
instructive as an example of patient and laborious effort, and
the diligent cultivation of opportunities. He was born in
1769, the son of a yeoman farmer at Churchill, in
Oxfordshire. His father dying when he was but a child, he
received a very sparing education at the village school, and even
that was to a considerable extent interfered with by his
wandering and somewhat idle habits as a boy. His mother
having married a second time, he was taken in charge by an uncle,
also a farmer, by whom he was brought up. Though the uncle
was by no means pleased with the boy’s love of wandering
about, collecting “poundstones,”
“pundips,” and other stony curiosities which lay
scattered about the adjoining land, he yet enabled him to
purchase a few of the necessary books wherewith to instruct
himself in the rudiments of geometry and surveying; for the boy
was already destined for the business of a land-surveyor.
One of his marked characteristics, even as a youth, was the
accuracy and keenness of his observation; and what he once
clearly saw he never forgot. He began to draw, attempted to
colour, and practised the arts of mensuration and surveying, all
without regular instruction; and by his efforts in self-culture,
he shortly became so proficient, that he was taken on as
assistant to a local surveyor of ability in the
neighbourhood. In carrying on his business he was
constantly under the necessity of traversing Oxfordshire and the
adjoining counties. One of the first things he seriously
pondered over, was the position of the various soils and strata
that came under his notice on the lands which he surveyed or
travelled over; more especially the position of the red earth in
regard to the lias and superincumbent rocks. The surveys of
numerous collieries which he was called upon to make, gave him
further experience; and already, when only twenty-three years of
age, he contemplated making a model of the strata of the
earth.

While engaged in levelling for a proposed canal in
Gloucestershire, the idea of a general law occurred to him
relating to the strata of that district. He conceived that
the strata lying above the coal were not laid horizontally, but
inclined, and in one direction, towards the east; resembling, on
a large scale, “the ordinary appearance of superposed
slices of bread and butter.” The correctness of this
theory he shortly after confirmed by observations of the strata
in two parallel valleys, the “red ground,”
“lias,” and “freestone” or
“oolite,” being found to come down in an eastern
direction, and to sink below the level, yielding place to the
next in succession. He was shortly enabled to verify the
truth of his views on a larger scale, having been appointed to
examine personally into the management of canals in England and
Wales. During his journeys, which extended from Bath to
Newcastle-on-Tyne, returning by Shropshire and Wales, his keen
eyes were never idle for a moment. He rapidly noted the
aspect and structure of the country through which he passed with
his companions, treasuring up his observations for future
use. His geologic vision was so acute, that though the road
along which he passed from York to Newcastle in the post chaise
was from five to fifteen miles distant from the hills of chalk
and oolite on the east, he was satisfied as to their nature, by
their contours and relative position, and their ranges on the
surface in relation to the lias and “red ground”
occasionally seen on the road.

The general results of his observation seem to have been
these. He noted that the rocky masses of country in the
western parts of England generally inclined to the east and
south-east; that the red sandstones and marls above the coal
measures passed beneath the lias, clay, and limestone, that these
again passed beneath the sands, yellow limestones and clays,
forming the table-land of the Cotswold Hills, while these in turn
passed beneath the great chalk deposits occupying the eastern
parts of England. He further observed, that each layer of
clay, sand, and limestone held its own peculiar classes of
fossils; and pondering much on these things, he at length came to
the then unheard-of conclusion, that each distinct deposit of
marine animals, in these several strata, indicated a distinct
sea-bottom, and that each layer of clay, sand, chalk, and stone,
marked a distinct epoch of time in the history of the earth.

This idea took firm possession of his mind, and he could talk
and think of nothing else. At canal boards, at
sheep-shearings, at county meetings, and at agricultural
associations, ‘Strata Smith,’ as he came to be
called, was always running over with the subject that possessed
him. He had indeed made a great discovery, though he was as
yet a man utterly unknown in the scientific world. He
proceeded to project a map of the stratification of England; but
was for some time deterred from proceeding with it, being fully
occupied in carrying out the works of the Somersetshire coal
canal, which engaged him for a period of about six years.
He continued, nevertheless, to be unremitting in his observation
of facts; and he became so expert in apprehending the internal
structure of a district and detecting the lie of the strata from
its external configuration, that he was often consulted
respecting the drainage of extensive tracts of land, in which,
guided by his geological knowledge, he proved remarkably
successful, and acquired an extensive reputation.

One day, when looking over the cabinet collection of fossils
belonging to the Rev. Samuel Richardson, at Bath, Smith
astonished his friend by suddenly disarranging his
classification, and re-arranging the fossils in their
stratigraphical order, saying—“These came from the
blue lias, these from the over-lying sand and freestone, these
from the fuller’s earth, and these from the Bath building
stone.” A new light flashed upon Mr.
Richardson’s mind, and he shortly became a convert to and
believer in William Smith’s doctrine. The geologists
of the day were not, however, so easily convinced; and it was
scarcely to be tolerated that an unknown land-surveyor should
pretend to teach them the science of geology. But William
Smith had an eye and mind to penetrate deep beneath the skin of
the earth; he saw its very fibre and skeleton, and, as it were,
divined its organization. His knowledge of the strata in
the neighbourhood of Bath was so accurate, that one evening, when
dining at the house of the Rev. Joseph Townsend, he dictated to
Mr. Richardson the different strata according to their order of
succession in descending order, twenty-three in number,
commencing with the chalk and descending in continuous series
down to the coal, below which the strata were not then
sufficiently determined. To this was added a list of the
more remarkable fossils which had been gathered in the several
layers of rock. This was printed and extensively circulated
in 1801.

He next determined to trace out the strata through districts
as remote from Bath as his means would enable him to reach.
For years he journeyed to and fro, sometimes on foot, sometimes
on horseback, riding on the tops of stage coaches, often making
up by night-travelling the time he had lost by day, so as not to
fail in his ordinary business engagements. When he was
professionally called away to any distance from home—as,
for instance, when travelling from Bath to Holkham, in Norfolk,
to direct the irrigation and drainage of Mr. Coke’s land in
that county—he rode on horseback, making frequent detours
from the road to note the geological features of the country
which he traversed.

For several years he was thus engaged in his journeys to
distant quarters in England and Ireland, to the extent of upwards
of ten thousand miles yearly; and it was amidst this incessant
and laborious travelling, that he contrived to commit to paper
his fast-growing generalizations on what he rightly regarded as a
new science. No observation, howsoever trivial it might
appear, was neglected, and no opportunity of collecting fresh
facts was overlooked. Whenever he could, he possessed
himself of records of borings, natural and artificial sections,
drew them to a constant scale of eight yards to the inch, and
coloured them up. Of his keenness of observation take the
following illustration. When making one of his geological
excursions about the country near Woburn, as he was drawing near
to the foot of the Dunstable chalk hills, he observed to his
companion, “If there be any broken ground about the foot of
these hills, we may find shark’s teeth;” and
they had not proceeded far, before they picked up six from the
white bank of a new fence-ditch. As he afterwards said of
himself, “The habit of observation crept on me, gained a
settlement in my mind, became a constant associate of my life,
and started up in activity at the first thought of a journey; so
that I generally went off well prepared with maps, and sometimes
with contemplations on its objects, or on those on the road,
reduced to writing before it commenced. My mind was,
therefore, like the canvas of a painter, well prepared for the
first and best impressions.”

Notwithstanding his courageous and indefatigable industry,
many circumstances contributed to prevent the promised
publication of William Smith’s ‘Map of the Strata of
England and Wales,’ and it was not until 1814 that he was
enabled, by the assistance of some friends, to give to the world
the fruits of his twenty years’ incessant labour. To
prosecute his inquiries, and collect the extensive series of
facts and observations requisite for his purpose, he had to
expend the whole of the profits of his professional labours
during that period; and he even sold off his small property to
provide the means of visiting remoter parts of the island.
Meanwhile he had entered on a quarrying speculation near Bath,
which proved unsuccessful, and he was under the necessity of
selling his geological collection (which was purchased by the
British Museum), his furniture and library, reserving only his
papers, maps, and sections, which were useless save to
himself. He bore his losses and misfortunes with exemplary
fortitude; and amidst all, he went on working with cheerful
courage and untiring patience. He died at Northampton, in
August, 1839, while on his way to attend the meeting of the
British Association at Birmingham.

It is difficult to speak in terms of too high praise of the
first geological map of England, which we owe to the industry of
this courageous man of science. An accomplished writer says
of it, “It was a work so masterly in conception and so
correct in general outline, that in principle it served as a
basis not only for the production of later maps of the British
Islands, but for geological maps of all other parts of the world,
wherever they have been undertaken. In the apartments of
the Geological Society Smith’s map may yet be seen—a
great historical document, old and worn, calling for renewal of
its faded tints. Let any one conversant with the subject
compare it with later works on a similar scale, and he will find
that in all essential features it will not suffer by the
comparison—the intricate anatomy of the Silurian rocks of
Wales and the north of England by Murchison and Sedgwick being
the chief additions made to his great generalizations.” [149] The genius of the Oxfordshire
surveyor did not fail to be duly recognised and honoured by men
of science during his lifetime. In 1831 the Geological
Society of London awarded to him the Wollaston medal, “in
consideration of his being a great original discoverer in English
geology, and especially for his being the first in this country
to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and to
determine their succession by means of their imbedded
fossils.” William Smith, in his simple, earnest way,
gained for himself a name as lasting as the science he loved so
well. To use the words of the writer above quoted,
“Till the manner as well as the fact of the first
appearance of successive forms of life shall be solved, it is not
easy to surmise how any discovery can be made in geology equal in
value to that which we owe to the genius of William
Smith.”

Hugh Miller was a man of like observant faculties, who studied
literature as well as science with zeal and success. The
book in which he has told the story of his life, (‘My
Schools and Schoolmasters’), is extremely interesting, and
calculated to be eminently useful. It is the history of the
formation of a truly noble character in the humblest condition of
life; and inculcates most powerfully the lessons of self-help,
self-respect, and self-dependence. While Hugh was but a
child, his father, who was a sailor, was drowned at sea, and he
was brought up by his widowed mother. He had a school
training after a sort, but his best teachers were the boys with
whom he played, the men amongst whom he worked, the friends and
relatives with whom he lived. He read much and
miscellaneously, and picked up odd sorts of knowledge from many
quarters,—from workmen, carpenters, fishermen and sailors,
and above all, from the old boulders strewed along the shores of
the Cromarty Frith. With a big hammer which had belonged to
his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, the boy went about
chipping the stones, and accumulating specimens of mica,
porphyry, garnet, and such like. Sometimes he had a day in
the woods, and there, too, the boy’s attention was excited
by the peculiar geological curiosities which came in his
way. While searching among the rocks on the beach, he was
sometimes asked, in irony, by the farm servants who came to load
their carts with sea-weed, whether he “was gettin’
siller in the stanes,” but was so unlucky as never to be
able to answer in the affirmative. When of a suitable age
he was apprenticed to the trade of his choice—that of a
working stonemason; and he began his labouring career in a quarry
looking out upon the Cromarty Frith. This quarry proved one
of his best schools. The remarkable geological formations
which it displayed awakened his curiosity. The bar of
deep-red stone beneath, and the bar of pale-red clay above, were
noted by the young quarryman, who even in such unpromising
subjects found matter for observation and reflection. Where
other men saw nothing, he detected analogies, differences, and
peculiarities, which set him a-thinking. He simply kept his
eyes and his mind open; was sober, diligent, and persevering; and
this was the secret of his intellectual growth.

His curiosity was excited and kept alive by the curious
organic remains, principally of old and extinct species of
fishes, ferns, and ammonites, which were revealed along the coast
by the washings of the waves, or were exposed by the stroke of
his mason’s hammer. He never lost sight of the
subject; but went on accumulating observations and comparing
formations, until at length, many years afterwards, when no
longer a working mason, he gave to the world his highly
interesting work on the Old Red Sandstone, which at once
established his reputation as a scientific geologist. But
this work was the fruit of long years of patient observation and
research. As he modestly states in his autobiography,
“the only merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of
patient research—a merit in which whoever wills may rival
or surpass me; and this humble faculty of patience, when rightly
developed, may lead to more extraordinary developments of idea
than even genius itself.”

The late John Brown, the eminent English geologist, was, like
Miller, a stonemason in his early life, serving an apprenticeship
to the trade at Colchester, and afterwards working as a
journeyman mason at Norwich. He began business as a builder
on his own account at Colchester, where by frugality and industry
he secured a competency. It was while working at his trade
that his attention was first drawn to the study of fossils and
shells; and he proceeded to make a collection of them, which
afterwards grew into one of the finest in England. His
researches along the coasts of Essex, Kent, and Sussex brought to
light some magnificent remains of the elephant and rhinoceros,
the most valuable of which were presented by him to the British
Museum. During the last few years of his life he devoted
considerable attention to the study of the Foraminifera in chalk,
respecting which he made several interesting discoveries.
His life was useful, happy, and honoured; and he died at Stanway,
in Essex, in November 1859, at the ripe age of eighty years.

Not long ago, Sir Roderick Murchison discovered at Thurso, in
the far north of Scotland, a profound geologist, in the person of
a baker there, named Robert Dick. When Sir Roderick called
upon him at the bakehouse in which he baked and earned his bread,
Robert Dick delineated to him, by means of flour upon the board,
the geographical features and geological phenomena of his native
county, pointing out the imperfections in the existing maps,
which he had ascertained by travelling over the country in his
leisure hours. On further inquiry, Sir Roderick ascertained
that the humble individual before him was not only a capital
baker and geologist, but a first-rate botanist. “I
found,” said the President of the Geographical Society,
“to my great humiliation that the baker knew infinitely
more of botanical science, ay, ten times more, than I did; and
that there were only some twenty or thirty specimens of flowers
which he had not collected. Some he had obtained as
presents, some he had purchased, but the greater portion had been
accumulated by his industry, in his native county of Caithness;
and the specimens were all arranged in the most beautiful order,
with their scientific names affixed.”

Sir Roderick Murchison himself is an illustrious follower of
these and kindred branches of science. A writer in the
‘Quarterly Review’ cites him as a “singular
instance of a man who, having passed the early part of his life
as a soldier, never having had the advantage, or disadvantage as
the case might have been, of a scientific training, instead of
remaining a fox-hunting country gentleman, has succeeded by his
own native vigour and sagacity, untiring industry and zeal, in
making for himself a scientific reputation that is as wide as it
is likely to be lasting. He took first of all an unexplored
and difficult district at home, and, by the labour of many years,
examined its rock-formations, classed them in natural groups,
assigned to each its characteristic assemblage of fossils, and
was the first to decipher two great chapters in the world’s
geological history, which must always henceforth carry his name
on their title-page. Not only so, but he applied the
knowledge thus acquired to the dissection of large districts,
both at home and abroad, so as to become the geological
discoverer of great countries which had formerly been
‘terræ incognitæ.’” But Sir
Roderick Murchison is not merely a geologist. His
indefatigable labours in many branches of knowledge have
contributed to render him among the most accomplished and
complete of scientific men.