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Assiduous in visiting the sick, he found the real happiness of his life (one might almost say its real business) in his scientific and literary recreations. The range and diversity of these may be gathered from a list of his published writings: ‘The Efficacy of Digitalis Applied to Scrofula,’ ‘On the Carpenter Bee (Apis Centuncularis),’ ‘Domestic Usage and Economy in the Reign of Elizabeth,’ ‘A Reply to a Query on Singular Fishes,’ ‘The Fabulous Foundation of the Popedom’ (abridged from Bernard), ‘Migratory Birds of the West of England,’ ‘God’s Arrow against Atheism and Irreligion,’ ‘A Dissertation on the Mermaid,’ ‘Observations on the Natural History of the Chameleon,’ ‘Ditto on the Jewish and Christian Sabbath Days,’ ‘Ditto on Cider-making and the Cultivation of Apple Trees,’ ‘Contributions to a Classification of British Crustacea,’ ‘On Man as the Image of the Deity,’ ‘Daulias Advena; or, the Migrations of the Swallow Tribe.’ We select these from the output of one decade only. A little later the activity grows less miscellaneous, and he is drifting upon his magnum opus, as the titles indicate, ‘Some Particulars of Rare Fishes found in Cornwall,’ ‘An Account of a Fish nearly allied to Hemiranphus,’ ‘On the Occurrence of the Crustacean Scyllurus Arctus.’

He would announce these strange visitors–sepia biserialis, for an instance–with no less eagerness than a journalist hails the advent of a foreign potentate. He had invented, as we have said, an apparatus on which he mounted them, with a jet of salt water that played over their scales and kept fresh, as he maintained, the delicate hues he copied from his water-colour box; with what success let anybody judge who has studied the four great volumes wherein these drawings survive, reproduced by lithography, and published by subscription.

Immersed in these studies, Doctor Unonius found no leisure to think of matrimony; and his friends and neighbours often took occasion to deplore it, for he was an extremely personable man, fresh-coloured and hale, of clean and regular habits, and, moreover, kind-hearted to a fault. All Polpeor agreed that he needed a wife to look after him, to protect him from being robbed; and Polpeor (to do it justice) did not say this without knowledge. The good man could never be persuaded that Polpeor folk–his folk–were capable of doing him a wrong; but certain it is that learnedly as he wrote ‘On the Cultivation of Apple Trees,’ the fruit of his carefully tended standards and espaliers seldom arrived at his own table. They burgeoned, they bloomed; the blossom ‘pitched,’ as we say in the West; the fruit swelled, ripened, and then–

Garden shows were rarities in those days: but Tregarrick (Polpeor’s nearest market town) boasted a Horticultural Society and an annual Exhibition. Whether from indolence or modesty Doctor Unonius never competed, but he seldom missed to visit the show and to con the exhibits. The date was then, and is to this day, the Feast of St Matthew, which falls on the twenty-first of September: and one year, on the morrow of St Matthew’s Feast, the doctor, gazing pensively over his orchard gate at a noble tree of fruit, remarked to his friend and next-door neighbour, Captain Minards, late of the merchant service–

‘Do you know, Minards, I was at Tregarrick yesterday; and I think– yes, without vaunting, I really think that the best of my pearmains yonder would have stood a fair chance of the prize for Table Varieties.’

‘The prize?’ grunted Captain Minards. ‘Don’t you fret about that: you won it all right.’

‘Eh?’ queried Doctor Unonius, wiping his spectacles.

‘Ay,’ said Captain Minards, filling a pipe; ‘you won it, right enough.’

‘But–‘

‘There’s no “but” about it. And what vexes me,’ pursued Captain Minards, ‘is that the rascals don’t even trouble to rob you neatly. See that branch broken, yonder.’

‘That’s with the weight of the crop.’

‘Weight o’ my fiddlestick! And the ground all strewed with short twigs!’