scattered threads of ingenuity
which already existed, and combined them into one firm and complete
fabric of his own. He realised the plans which others had imperfectly
formed; and was the first to construct, what so many others had
unsuccessfully attempted, the practical and economical working
locomotive.

Mr. Stephenson's close and accurate observation provided him with a
fulness of information on many subjects, which often appeared surprising
to those who had devoted to them a special study. On one occasion the
accuracy of his knowledge of birds came out in a curious way at a
convivial meeting of railway men in London. The engineers and railway
directors present knew each other as railway men and nothing more. The
talk had been all of railways and railway politics. Mr. Stephenson was a
great talker on those subjects, and was generally allowed, from the
interest of his conversation and the extent of his experience, to take
the lead. At length one of the party broke in with "Come now,
Stephenson, we have had nothing but railways; cannot we have a change and
try if we can talk a little about something else?" "Well," said Mr.
Stephenson, "I'll give you a wide range of subjects; what shall it be
about?" "Say _birds' nests_!" rejoined the other, who prided himself on
his special knowledge of this subject. "Then birds' nests be it." A
long and animated conversation ensued: the bird-nesting of his boyhood,
the blackbird's nest which his father had held him up in his arms to look
at when a child at Wylam, the hedges in which he had found the thrush's
and the linnet's nests, the mossy bank where the robin built, the cleft
in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its
dwelling--all rose up clear in his mind's eye, and led him back to the
scenes of his boyhood at Callerton and Dewley Burn. The colour and
number of the bird's eggs, the period of their incubation, the materials
employed by them for the walls and lining of their nests, were described
by him so vividly, and illustrated by such graphic anecdotes, that one of
the party remarked that, if George Stephenson had not been the greatest
engineer of his day, he might have been one of the greatest naturalists.

His powers of conversation were very great. He was so thoughtful, so
original, and so suggestive. There was scarcely a department of science
on which he had not formed some novel and sometimes daring theory. Thus
Mr. Gooch, his pupil