John Keast Lord, about whose life certain details are a matter of speculation, grew up in Tavistock, Devon, received a medical education at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London), and subsequently (in 1844) a diploma from the Royal Veterinary College. Lord's education was evidently not narrow; he clearly developed a skill not only in animal medicine but in zoology and classification, as well as an informed interest in virtually all parts of the natural world. He was obviously well read--his literary references are telling clues. Though he returned to a veterinary practice in Tavistock, the call of distant climes was too strong to be resisted. After surviving a shipwreck on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he apparently served on a Greenland whaler, later found his way to Quebec (not for the first time in the grip of cholera), and thence to Bruce County, Ontario, where he spent a...