A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2026, 22 December 1892, Page 24

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

MR ARTHUR BETERLY.

Specially written for the Witness Christmas

Number of 1892.

By DINQRNIS.

To very many readers of the Otago Witness the name of Arthur Beverly is a household word. Puzzled miners, farmers, &c, but for his kindly and always willingly-given help, would, in many case 3, remain puzzled till the end of the chapter. In this sparselypeopled colony there are not many capable of giving the particular kind and quality of information embodied from week to week in Mr Beverly's replies to correspondents in the Notes and Queries column of the Witness. Of those capable, I fear but few would be found willing, solely for love's sake, to answer with care and accuracy the endless variety of mathematical and mechanical queries from all sorts and conditions of men which keep continually dropping in. They — the query letters— are of all sorts. Some of them, it is evident, have been inscribed by hands utterly unused to pencraft, while others might well have been written by men of scholastic culture, whose lives have known softer conditions than are usually to be found in or around the goldfields. However, it is not with those who ask the "questions, but with the man who always so cheerfully answers them, that we are just now concerned. This, however, we may say, that it matters not a jot to Mr Beverly how or by whom queries are indited. The pains he takes to elucidate them are ever the same.

For these and other reasons, which our esteemed, able, and obliging friend would not thank us to dilate upon, we have very great pleasure in presenting our readers with his portrait, engraved from a fine photo by Mr Irwin, late of the London Portrait Rooms, Princes street. Arthur Beverly was born at the farm of Strathead, in the parish of Alford, Aber deensbire, on March 22, 1822. Here his early years passed uneventfully. The village was a long way off, and fqjk then did not send their children to school so early in life ;as the law now bids them to do. On the other hand it was no uncommon thing for parents to do a good deal in the way of teaching their bairns themselves before passing them on to the dominie. The subject of this sketch was, I believe, owing to the geographical positions of his early dwelling places, kept away from school longer than

was usual, even at the time. He had, however, by his eighth birthday learned to read very well, and in arithmetic had got as far as proportion. About the time that he reached his eighth year, the family removed to a larger farm in the adjoining county of Kincardine, at a place called Cookney nine miles from Aberdeen. Here his time at the local school was brief, the distance (two miles) making regular attendance impossible— especially in bad weather.

After a two-years' trial, his father's farming venture having proved a failure, the family moved into the county town of Stonehaven, where Arthur Beverly found his first real schoolmaster in the person of James Taylor, a shoemaker, an able man and a good teacher. In this case he had a good pupil, who has never failed to do" full justice to whatever subject he has applied his -mind. Taylor taught him Euclid, trigonometry, astronomical problems, land measuring, and navigation. He would have taught him algebra also had not his knowledge of. that branch of science become very rusty from want of! practical application. He used to take his pupil iuto the country with him on land-surveying excursions," and also emplojed him as assistant in an evening sclioal attended by young men — mostly sailors. Even this, his most important school period, was of brief duration, consisting of the winter part o£ each year only, for in the summer he was employed herding cattle on some of. the neighbouring farms. His mechanical proclivities were already budding ; for while be tended the kye he also found time to carve wooden puzzles, windmills, and such-like curiosities. This mixture of schooling and working continued for about four years, after which he was for a while kept constantly herding. His time at school was brief, but he made the most of it, gathering in whatever the dominie could teach him with a oheerful receptiveness, which has remained throughout life one of his most marked characteristic?.

During his fifteenth year he left Stonehaven for Aberdeen, there to be bound apprentice to a reputable watchmaker and optician, the late Baillie Berry. The choice was a happy one, giving good scope to his already growing mechanical aptitudes. About this time he found " Hutton's Mathematical Recreations " in the Mechanics' Institute Library of the town, and this treasure casket he at once plunged into, finding, as he once told roe, that it " suited

him all to pieces." He never dropped the subject again, and at the present day chief among his many intellectual hobbies stands the study of mathematics.

In about a year after his leaving Stonehaven his parents also left that town, and settled in Aberdeen, where his father died soon after, a disappointed man. The loss of his father brought him face to face with a grim world at an age when few lads have even began to realise that there is a dark as well as a bright side to human life. About this "time he earned not his own subsistence only, but that of his family also. Like Spinoza, he ground lenses for a living. His first essay in this way was the making of a set of microscope lenses for Dr Dickie, then professor of botany in Mariechal College, Aberdeen. The professor was so pleased with the glasses that he recommended the lad to several brother scientists in England, who very willingly employed him to make and mount glasses for them.

As an apprentice he gave close attention to the details of his trade, but did not fail to find plenty of time for other subjects of interest. Part of his duties consisted in making periodical journeys on foot into the country, sometimes to a considerable distance away from Aberdeen. Zig-zagging over the district from country house to country house on these clock-cleaning expeditions was, at anyrate during fine weather, a by no means unpleasant occupation. His practice was to push through with his work and then return more at leisure, botanising all the way to his bench in the city again.

Thus he laid the foundation of a thoroughly competent, practical knowledge of the botany of Britain ; and I may just add that when he retired from business he acquired a knowledge of the native New Zealand flora in a similar .'manner— minus, of course, the clock-cleaning" and the oountry houses.

After having worked as a journeyman for about eight years in Aberdeen, Mr Beverly, then at the age of 30, took passage in a imall vessel — the Jane Garioch — about to sail direct for Melbourne. The little ship of ibout 200 tons took a living human cargo only, there being 78 passengers on board, all of the same class. The voyage was a long but a happy one. In those early days, when six months was not uncommonly spent in passing from Britain to Australia, there was, naturally, far more scope for the development of the social virtues than is possible in our era of swift steamers.

Although offered work while tramping up from Sandridge to Melbourne, he preferred, as did everyone at that time, to try his luck at the diggings. For the next nine months he shared, being one of a party, of seven, the rough but jovial and wholesome life of the miner. The first part of that time was spent at Fryer's creek, where luck was so deficient that they had serious thoughts of taking to stonebreaking as a means of keeping up the supply of " tucker " ; afterwards they did fairly well both at this place and at M'lvor, but neither nuggets nor dust came in sufficient quantity to recompense expended toil. The subject of this sketch had become fully oonvinced that he could get what gold was needed with much greater eaße by working at bis trade. He returned to Melbourne and worked for five years, wages being then at the rate of L 6 a week for good tradesmen. Obago was beginning to be spoken of as a rising colony, having a climate which for British-born folk could not be surpassed in the southern hemisphere. Investing his total savings in a good stock of watches and jewellery, Mr Beverly came over in January 1858, and opened in a modest wooden shop, the site of which is now covered by that part of the A.M.P. building next Wilkinson, druggist, Princes street. In 1860 he built two new shops on the opposite side of Princes street, moving into one of them and letting the other. Mr Dawson, je seller, now occupies that site. During the first and second years of his life in Dunedin, Mr Beverly was a member of the Town Board, and took a more active interest in. the affairs of the neighbourhood than he has ever done since. But it must not be thought that our friend is one of those who selfishly take advantage Of their monetary independence and disdain to take any heed of what is going on around them. He is an omnivorous newspaper reader, and holds very decided opinions regarding most public measures and public men. All along from his first start Mr Beverly had a superabundance of work from every part of the province. Means of transit were then only of the most rudimentary kind. Waggons, packhorses, and coasting sloops did all the carrying. Yet things went on merrily enough. David Hutchinson, a man of energy and intelligence, well known as the discoverer and first worker of the Shag Point coal mine, then carried the mails on horseback between Dunedin and Oamaru. He also brought in and took home again the settlers' watches for our friend to overhaul, thus (proving a ready, constant, and always most reliable moans of intercommunication between both parties. Hutchinson was aby no means common man : among other things which give note to his name is the fact that he was among the first, if not actually the first, to discover and work the now-famous Oamaru freestone.

During Mr Beverly's basiness 'days the Gabriel's Gully gold discovery was made, and caused a kind of revolution in Dunedin. He was prevailed upon, being known as an old miner, to make a tour of inspection of the newly-discovered Eldorado, and his return with a highly favourable report of the panning-out gave the signal for departure of a large number of the townspeople. The whole place was in a ferment, and everyone was eager to gain a favourable start " in the fierce race for wealth," in which so few ever manage to pass the winning post. In about six and a-halE years from the date of his arrival in Danedin the subject of our sketch retired from business. Having in that time saved enough for comfort and easy competence, he built a house on bis fine section in Heriot Row and decided to live free from business worries for the rest of his life. Whether, in this matter, it; would be well that many should imitate him I do not venture to guess. But this Ido know: that Mr Beverly has never had the least cause to regret the laying aside of business cares. There is probably no man either " here aboot or far awa 1 " who manages to find more solid

sensible enjoyment in life than does our friend. " Take," he says, " what you can of the good things of life while you can. You may not always have the chance you" now have." Either while in his own snug sitting room engaged at his scientific tasks, or while rambling upon and among the beautiful hills about Dunedin, or enjoying the sea breezes at St. Clair, he " takes the ohance he has, and enjoys life as it comes." This fragmentary sketch does not pretend to be a biography, but a necessarily imperfect note written almost without the knowledge of the subject of it, who is by no means enamoured of any kind of notoriety. It is, I believe, not generally known even to bis friends that Mr Beverly is the inventor of the Planimeter, a wonderful little machine capable of measuring the area of any map, however irregular in outline. This clever piece of mechanism was sent in 18G5 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and gained for its inventor the MacDougal Brisbane Prize for the best invention of the year. It is extremely characteristic of its maker that he never sought by selling the patent rights or in any other way to profit by the invention, which is now used in every part of the world.

Nowadays it is the custom to seek minute details of the everyday habits of those in whom we are interested. For the satisfaction of those who have this hankering strong within them I may mention that our friend ia a bachelor ; that he is a fairly heavy smoker; that for light reading he prefers good novels and books oil travels of a scientific cast ; that he is very abstemious in everything relating to eating and drinking ; that he has a mortal aversion to all vegetables of the cabbage kind ; that he is a late 3itter, about midnight being his usual hour for turning in ; that he is a correspondingly late riser, being somewhat destitute of faith in wise saws of the " early to bed and early to rise " sort ; and that at the age of 70 his hair just shows a tendency towards greyness. Like every man possessing both culture and competence, he has troops of friends, who I am sure all unite in hoping that he ma? yet enjoy many years of \\U and happiness.

Princess Louise has now completed the bust of the Queen which she intends to send to Ohicago next year. Her Royal Highness is well known to be an excellent sculptress, and all who have seen her latest work pronounce it to be the best she has ever done. The likeness is said to be striking. The Americans will also have a further opportunity of admiring this Royal lady's artistic ability, for the Princess has decided to exhibit a few oil paintings and water-colour drawings, which will be on sale for the benefit of a charity.