In order to obtain all these products of the sea, Edward went round among the fishermen from Crovie to Portsoy, and pressed them to help him in his researches. He told them that many an object of great interest to Naturalists was daily thrown away. Though it might be of no use to them, it might prove of great use to science. “Oh!” said the fishermen, “we canna tell what the fellow wants: we get so muckle trash upon our lines. Are we to keep it all?”
“Yes,” replied Edward, “keep it all. Lay it carefully aside, and I or my daughters will call for it.” A few of the fishermen did what Edward told them to do; but the others “couldna be fashed.”
Edward published his advice to the fishermen in the _Banffshire Journal_. “How little trouble,” he said, “would it be for any fisherman who might find a rare fish, crab, shell, or zoophyte, or such like object attached to his lines, to get it examined and named, so that its occurrence might be recorded. This could be done, and then he could, if so minded, dispose of it to the best advantage. Or what great ‘fash’ could it be for them to keep the cleanings of their lines for a like scientific purpose?
“It is quite astonishing what amazing numbers of minute creatures are at times to be found amongst the refuse of only one boat’s lines. No one would believe it, except those who are in the habit of carefully examining such things. The ocean is, as it were, one vast and boundless expanse of life, and the inhabitants thereof about as numberless as the sands by the sea-shore. I have myself, and that too under the most disadvantageous circumstances, picked off from a dead valve of _Cyprina Islandica_ nine distinct species of shells, three different kinds of starfish, and five separate sorts of zoophytes, besides worms and a number of other parasitical animals. Yet this is nothing to what is at times to be met with; and yet such things are, I may say, all but universally thrown away for no other or better purpose than that of being trod upon and destroyed. I will now, in order to show the truthfulness of my statement, enumerate a few of the objects which have thus been cast aside by those who had brought them on shore, but which were again picked up by my _gleaners_, and thereby redeemed, as it were, for a time from destruction, by being deposited in my collection:—_Anomia patelliformis_, _Circe minuta_, _Venus casina_, _Venus fasciata_, _Tellina proxima_, _Tellina crassa_, _Mangelia linearis_, _Pentunculus glycimeris_, _Psammobia tellinella_, _Astarte compressa_, _Corbula nucleus_, _Emarginula reticulata_, _Thracia villiosulca_, _Chiton lævis_, etc. etc.