His love of learning manifested itself in other ways. When half a century ago the British Association had sprung into existence, causing a flutter among Church dignitaries, who failed to see that Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the advancement of science, and very reverend deans were addressing letters of remonstrance to its promoters on the "Dangers of Peripatetic Philosophy," Edward Stanley courageously came forward as its advocate, and was enrolled as one of its early vice-presidents. A one-sided development of the mind was then the characteristic of the older universities, and men often-times left college without a single idea concerning the common things of every-day life or the slightest knowledge of any of God's works. The rector of Alderley was in many respects self-educated; dependent in a great measure upon his own resources, he had discovered that dead literature could not be made the parent of living science or active industry, and was one of the first clergymen to direct popular attention to the wondrous history of the stones of the field, the birds of the air, and the "gnats above the summer stream." "The perversions of men," he was wont to say, "would have made an infidel of him but for the counteracting impressions of Divine Providence in the works of nature." Like Gilbert White, at Selborne, he devoted much of his leisure in noting the instincts of animals and the phenomena of ever-changing nature. Ornithology was his favourite subject of study, and the staircases and corridors of his rectory house, adorned as they were with cuttings from "Bewick," bore testimony to his love of birds, while their habits and peculiarities formed a constant source of interest and amusement to him in his rambles through the fields and along the rural lanes of his parish. The result of his labours he embodied in a pleasantly-written work, published by the Christian Knowledge Society--"A Familiar History of Birds: their Nature, Habits, and Instincts"--a work that has passed through several editions--in which are recorded many of the observations made at Alderley.