BOOK III, OTHER BENEFAC TORS OF RECENT HUGH TRAVELS indubitable flesh and blood, are mingled with the more unsubstantial forms of Nereids, riding upon Tritons. Of the men devoted, in our own day, to the enchaining pursuits of Natural History, few better deserve a compeCUMING; HIS tent biographer than does Hugh CUMING, whose career, in its relation to the Museum history, has an additional interest for us from the circumstance that his course in life was partly shaped by his having attracted, in childhood, the notice of another worthy naturalist and public benefactor, See page 376. Colonel George MONTAGU, of Lackham. AND HIS AND ELSE WHERE. 1791. Young CUMING's childish fondness for picking up shells and gathering plants attracted Colonel MONTAGU's notice about the time that the boy was apprenticed to a sailmaker, living not far from the boy's native village, West Alvington, in Devon. The elder naturalist fostered the nascent passion of his young and humble imitator, and the trade of sailmaking brought CUMING, whilst still a boy, into contact with sailors. The benevolent and Nature-loving Colonel told the youngster some of the fairy tales of science; the tars spun yarns for him about the marvels of foreign parts. A few, and very few, years of work at his trade at home. were followed by a voyage to South America. At Valparaiso he resumed his handicraft, but only as a step (by aid of frugality and foresight) towards saving enough of money to enable him to devote his whole being to conchology and to botany. Seven years of work under this inspiring ambition, seem to have enabled the man of five-and-thirty to retire from business, and to build himself a yacht. But his was to be no lounging yachtman's life; it was rather to resemble the life of an A.B. before the mast. The year 1827 was spent in toiling and dredging, to good purpose, amongst the islands of the South Pacific. When he re Chap. VI. TORS OF DAYS. of 1865; turned to Valparaiso, the retired sailmaker found that he BOOK III, had won fame, as well as many precious rarities in conchology and botany. The Chilian Government gave him special privileges and useful credentials. He then devoted RECENT two years to the thorough exploration of the coasts extending from Chiloë to the Gulf of Conchagua. He botanized Athenaum in plains, marshes and woods; he turned over shingle, and Returns preexplored the crannies of the cliffs, with the patient endur- Parliament, ance of a Californian gold-digger, and was much happier in his companions. In 1831, he returned to England, with a modest but assured livelihood, and with inexhaustible treasures in shells and plants, of which multitudes were theretofore unseen and unknown in Europe. The year 1831 was a happy epoch for a conchologist. The Zoological Society had just gained a firm footing. BRODERIP and SOWERBY were ready to exhibit and to describe the rich shells of the Pacific. Richard OWEN was eager to anatomize the molluscs, and to write their biography. Some of the novelties brought over by CUMING in 1831 were still yielding new information thirty years afterwards; probably are yielding it still. In 1835, Mr. CUMING returned to America. He devoted four years to an exhaustive survey of the natural historymore especially, but far from exclusively, the conchology and the botany-of the Philippine group of islands, of Malacca, Singapore, and St. Helena. CUMING was fitted for his work not more by his scientific ardour and his patient toil-bearing, than by his amiable character. He loved children. His manner was so attractive to them that in some places to which he travelled a schoolful of children were extemporised into botanic missionaries. The joyous band would turn out for a holiday, and would spend the whole of it in searching for the plants, sented to v. y. the shells, and the insects, with the general forms and appearances of which the promoter and rewarder of their voluntary labours had previously familiarised them. He returned to England with such a collection of shells as no previous investigator had brought home; and with about one hundred and thirty thousand specimens of dried plants, besides many curious specimens in other departments. His collections had been a London marvel before he set out on his third voyage of discovery. He then possessed, I believe, almost sixteen thousand species, and they were regarded as a near approximation to a perfect collection, according to the knowledge of the time. If the writer of the able notice of him which the Athenæum published immediately after his death was rightly informed, CUMING nearly doubled that number by the results of his final voyage, and by those of subsequent purchases made in Europe. Very naturally, strenuous efforts were made to ensure the perpetuity of this noble collection during its owner's lifetime. The history of those efforts still deserves to be told, and for more than one reason. But it cannot be told here. This inadequate notice of a most estimable man must close with the few words which, three years ago, closed Professor OWEN's annual Report on the Progress of the Zoological Portion of the British Museum. The discoveries and labours of Mr. Hugh CUMING,' he then wrote, 'do honour to his country; the fruition of them by Naturalists of all countries now depends mainly on the acquisition of the space required for the due arrangement, exhibition-facility of access and comparison-of the rarities which the Nation has acquired.' And then he adds a small individual instance, as a passing illustration of the value of Mr. CUMING'S lifelong pursuit-Among the choicer rarities,... brought from the Philippines in 1840, was a specimen Chap. VI. BENEFAC- DAYS. p. 203. of siliceous sponge (described and figured in the Transac- BOOK III, tions of the Zoological Society), known as Euplectella Aspergillum.' Up to the date of Mr. CUMING's death (tenth August, 1865), this specimen of what, for non-zoological readers, may be likened to a sort of coral of rare beauty Transactions, brought over in 1840, was unique. In the year next after, vol. iii, the discoverer's death, many fine and curious specimens were sent from the Philippines. The solitary explorer of 1839 had at length been followed by a school of explorers. Such men as CUMING live after their death, and hence the marvellous increase, within a very few years, in our knowledge of Nature, and of GOD's bounty to the world he made. he J. R. CHORLEY AND HIS COLLECTION Mr. Rutter By a man who did but little in literature, although possessed attainments which, in some respects, seem to have surpassed those of a good many men whose lucubrations have had much publicity and vogue, a valuable addition was made a few years ago, by bequest, to the Museum DRAMATISTS. Library, both in the printed and manuscript departments. Mr. John Rutter CHORLEY had collected about two hundred Will of volumes of the Spanish poetry and drama, and had enriched Chorley, 1866. them with manuscript notes, bibliographical and critical. He had also prepared chronological tables of the dramatists-writing them in Spanish, of which he was a master—together with an account of their respective works. He had, I think, contemplated, at some future time, the preparation of some such book on the Spanish theatre as that published by Mr. TICKNOR, many years ago, on Spanish literature at large. Whether the appearance of TICKNOR'S valuable book deterred Mr. CHORLEY from prosecuting his purpose, I know not. Probably he was one of the many men the very extent of whose knowledge inspires a fastidiousness which prompts them to keep on increasing their Воок 111, Chap. VI. OTHER BENEFAC TORS OF RECENT DAYS. GEORGE WITT AND TIONS ILLUS TRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF TIONS. private store, and to defer, almost until death overtakes them, the drawing from that store for the Public. If there may really, by some dim possibility, have been here and there an inglorious HAMPDEN, or a mute SHAKESPEARE, it is very certain that there have been, in literary history and in like departments of human study, many an unknown DISRAELI, many a Tom WARTON, brimful of knowledge about poets and poetry, who never could have lived long enough to put to public use the materials he had laboriously brought together. Of another Collector, whose pursuits lay at an opposite pole to those of Mr. CHORLEY, it would not be edifying to say very much in these pages. Some among the collections. illustrative of the history of obscure superstitions (to quote the polite euphuism of one of the Museum Returns to Parliament) partake, in a degree, of the peculiar associations which connect themselves with the bare name of a place at which some few of them were really found-that too famous retreat of the Emperor TIBERIUS. Others of them, however, possess a real archæological value from a different point of view. All, no doubt, are characteristically illustrative, more or less, of the doings in the dark places of the earth,' and may point a moral, howsoever little fitted to adorn a tale. Mr. George WITT, F.R.S., the collector of these curiosities of human error, was a surgeon who had lived much in Australia, and who, on his return from the Colonies, had retired to a provincial town in England, where, at first, he amused his leisure by gathering a small museum of natural history. Of that collection I remember to have seen a printed catalogue, but I imagine that he sold it in his lifetime, as no part of his objects of natural history came, with his other and much more eccentric museum, to the aug |