Excerpt from Robert Pocock: The Gravesend Historian, Naturalist, Antiquarian, and Printer

He was eminently a student Of nature, and not only an acquirer Of useful information but its indefatigable disseminator.

The toilsome search for a fossil, the active pursuit Of any new butterfly, the unwearied scanning Of the heavens, the discovery of a rare plant, - these were his recreations.

Ever accessible at his humble shop - one day to a waterman freighted with some outlandish fish, On another to a countryman laden with a curious bird or some unusual plant - it was his delight to supply their names and classification; but student Of nature as he was, he knew that well-nigh every parish in his ancient county - Kent - is decorated with a hundred memories of historical interest, and hence his antiquarian pur suits kept pace with his study Of natural history.

If he had evinced less of these qualities and had been more of the shopkeeper, he might have accumulated money in lieu of dying homeless and a wanderer. But his higher instincts ever led him to seek knowledge, and to publish it even in its most elementary form, SO much SO that his place Of honour is among the very pioneers Of elementary literature, in the production Of the Easy Reading Books for the Young, which supplanted the Old Horn Books Of less lettered genera tions, while his Navy List and his Companions (the origin Of the modern Guide Book), are proofs that there was existing in Pocock not only the apt and ready detection Of a public want, but the energy and skill to supply it, so far as his limited means enabled.

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