could not have stood the
cold, the damp, and the exposure in the way he did. His food was
chiefly oatmeal-cake; his drink was water. "Sometimes, when I could
afford it," he says, "my wife boiled an egg or two, and these were my
only luxuries." He had a large family, and the task of providing for
them was quite enough for his slender means, without leaving much
margin for beer or whisky.

But the best constitution won't stand privation and exposure for ever.
By-and-by Edward fell ill, and had a fever. He was ill for a month,
and when he came round again the doctor told him that he must at once
give up his nightly wandering. This was a real and serious blow to
poor Edward; it was asking him to give up his one real pleasure and
interest in life. All the happiest moments he had ever known were
those which he had spent in the woods and fields, or among the lonely
mountains with the falcons, and the herons, and the pine-martens, and
the ermines. All this delightful life he was now told he must abandon
for ever. Nor was that all. Illness costs money. While a man is
earning nothing, he is running up a doctor's bill. Edward now saw that
he must at last fall back upon his savings bank, as he rightly called
it--his loved and cherished collection of Banffshire animals. He had
to draw upon it heavily. Forty cases of birds were sold; and Edward
now knew that he would never be able to replace the specimens he had
parted with.

Still, his endless patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering
by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the
merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching
after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter
woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward
could expend his remaining energy, and in which he was to do better
work for science than in all the rest--the sea.

This new field he began to cultivate in a novel and ingenious way. He
got together all the old broken pails, pots, pans, and kettles he could
find in the neighbourhood, filled them with straw or bits of rag, and
then sank them with a heavy stone into the rocky pools that abound
along that weather-beaten coast. A rope was tied to one end, by which
he could raise them again; and once a month he used to go his rounds to
visit these very primitive but effectual sea-traps. Lots of living
things had meanwhile congregated in the safe nests thus provi