Young CUMING’S childish fondness for picking up shells and gathering plants attracted Colonel MONTAGU’S notice about the time that the boy was apprenticed to a sailmaker, living not far from the boy’s native village, West Alvington, in Devon. The elder naturalist fostered the nascent passion of his young and humble imitator, and the trade of sailmaking brought CUMING, whilst still a boy, into contact with sailors. The benevolent and Nature-loving Colonel told the youngster some of the fairy tales of science; the tars spun yarns for him about the marvels of foreign parts. A few, and very few, years of work at his trade at home were followed by a voyage to South America. At Valparaiso he resumed his handicraft, but only as a step (by aid of frugality and foresight) towards saving enough of money to enable him to devote his whole being to conchology and to botany. Seven years of work under this inspiring ambition, seem to have enabled the man of five-and-thirty to retire from business, and to build himself a yacht. But his was to be no lounging yachtman’s life; it was rather to resemble the life of an A.B. before the mast. The year 1827 was spent in toiling and dredging, to good purpose, amongst the islands of the South Pacific. When he returned to Valparaiso, the retired sailmaker found that he had won fame, as well as many precious rarities in conchology and botany. The Chilian Government gave him special privileges and useful credentials. He then devoted two years to the thorough exploration of the coasts extending from Chiloë to the Gulf of Conchagua. [Sidenote: _Athenæum_ of 1865; _Returns presented to Parliament_, v. y.] He botanized in plains, marshes and woods; he turned over shingle, and explored the crannies of the cliffs, with the patient endurance of a Californian gold-digger, and was much happier in his companions. In 1831, he returned to England, with a modest but assured livelihood, and with inexhaustible treasures in shells and plants, of which multitudes were theretofore unseen and unknown in Europe. The year 1831 was a happy epoch for a conchologist. The Zoological Society had just gained a firm footing. BRODERIP and SOWERBY were ready to exhibit and to describe the rich shells of the Pacific. Richard OWEN was eager to anatomize the molluscs, and to write their biography. Some of the novelties brought over by CUMING in 1831 were still yielding new information thirty years afterwards; probably are yielding it still. In 1835, Mr. CUMING returned to America. He devoted four years to an exhaustive survey of the natural history—more especially, but far from exclusively, the conchology and the botany—of the Philippine group of islands, of Malacca, Singapore, and St. Helena.