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Edward
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Edwardes

the task of preparing popular lectures on the rudiments of natural history, were heavy blows to Edward. He now sought some better employment in all likely directions, but could secure nothing. He had begun contributing to several natural history journals, but received no payments in return. By 1858, however, Edward had accumulated a third collection, the best he had made. Illness again prostrated him, and when he partially recovered, though remaining incapable of undergoing long and fatiguing expeditions again, a great part of his collection had to be sold. Having to abandon night wanderings and give up his gun, Edward took to marine zoology in earnest. In default of proper apparatus he devised most ingenious substitutes; and as the result of his investigations Spence Bate and Westwood's 'History of British Sessile-eyed Crustacea' enumerates twenty new species discovered by Edward, who had collected 177 species in the Moray Firth. In other branches of marine zoology Edward furnished many facts, specimens, and new species to Messrs. Gwyn Jeffreys, Alder, A. M. Norman, Jonathan Couch, and many others. He had, however, obtained no scientific recognition more important than a curatorship of the museum of the Banff Institution, at a salary of two guineas a year, until in 1866 he was elected an associate of the Linnean Society of London. The Aberdeen and the Glasgow Natural History societies followed suit; but the Banff society did not elect their notable townsman an honorary member. The society itself deservedly died in 1875. The museum being transferred to the Banff town council, Edward was continued as curator at thirteen guineas a year, but resigned the office in 1882.

A serious illness in 1868 left Edward almost incapable of following his trade, but he afterwards recovered sufficiently to resume work at home. The publication of Mr. Smiles's biography of Edward in 1876 was the means of making Edward widely known, and of making him comfortable in his latter days. Sir Joseph Hooker, P.R.S., Professors Allman and Owen, and Mr. Darwin joined in appealing to the queen on Edward's behalf. On Christmas day 1876 Edward received the welcome news of the bestowal of a civil list pension of 50l. On 21 March 1877 he was presented with 333l., largely subscribed in Aberdeen, at a meeting in the Aberdeen Song School, at which the veteran, with his faithful wife, was received with enthusiasm, and delivered a most racy speech in broad vernacular (see Aberdeen weekly Journal, 28 March 1877). Other donations of considerable amount were sent to him. He now entered with extraordinary zeal upon the study of botany, and collected nearly every plant in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire. When the Banffshire Field Club was established in 1880, Edward was elected one of its vice-presidents, and read before it papers on the 'Protection of Wild Birds' and on 'Our Reptiles,' which were printed by the society. Edward died on 27 April 1886. He left one son, a minister in the Scotch church, and ten daughters.

[Life by S. Smiles, 1876; Nature (1877), xv. 349–51, 439, 479, (1886) xxxiii. 609; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 28 March 1877; Banffshire Journal, 4 May 1886.]

G. T. B.


EDWARDES, Sir HERBERT BENJAMIN (1819–1868), Indian official, second son of the Rev. B. Edwardes, born at Frodesley, Shropshire, 12 Nov. 1819, was of an ancient Cambrian family, the head of which was made a baronet by Charles II. The mother dying during his infancy Edwardes was taken charge of by an aunt, and sent in his tenth year to a private school at Richmond, where he failed to distinguish himself either as a scholar or as an athlete. In 1837 he began to attend classes at King's College, London, where also he made but moderate progress in classics and mathematics, although more successful in modern languages and a prominent member of the debating society. He also displayed a turn for drawing and wrote English verse. Checked in a desire to enter the university of Oxford, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry by personal application to a member of the court of directors. Sir R. Jenkins. He proceeded direct to India without passing through the company's military academy, and landed in Calcutta early in 1841. An observer of that day (Lieutenant-colonel Leigh) describes him as then slight and delicate-looking, with fully formed features and an expression of bright intelligence; not given to the active amusements by which most young men of his class and nation are wont to speed the hours, but abounding in mental accomplishment and resource. He was in garrison at Karnál,then a frontier station, in July 1842, a second lieutenant in the 1st Europeans or Bengal fusiliers, now the 1st battalion royal Munster fusiliers. Although the languages of the East were not necessary to an officer so emploved, Edwardes's habits of study were by this time strong, and he soon came to the front as a linguist, passing examinations in Urdu, Hindi, and Persian. In little more than three years after joining his regiment he was pronounced duly qualified for the post of 'interpreter.' The