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C. F. Hayward, Esq., a well-known London architect, who had a country house close by my cottage. Mr. Hayward began life with nothing but a good education, industry, and a love of knowledge. He is an example of the possibility of success in farming without early training and with very scanty capital. Of course, the period was a good one for farmers, but it was not every one who could have made even a bare living under such unfavourable conditions. After he came to live at Godalming, when over seventy years of age, he began to exercise his hitherto dormant faculty of water-colour drawing. For this he made most of his own colours from natural pigments, earthy or vegetable, and executed a number of bold and effective landscapes, showing that if he had had early training he might have excelled in this beautiful art. Mr. Hayward was among my oldest and most esteemed friends.

During the larger portion of my residence at Neath we had very little to do, and my brother was often away, either seeking employment or engaged upon small matters of business in various parts of the country. I was thus left a good deal to my own devices, and having no friends of my own age I occupied myself with various pursuits in which I had begun to take an interest. Having learnt the use of the sextant in surveying, and my brother having a book on Nautical Astronomy, I practised a few of the simpler observations. Among these were determining the meridian by equal altitudes of the sun, and also by the pole-star at its upper or lower culmination; finding the latitude by the meridian altitude of the sun, or of some of the principal stars; and making a rude sundial by erecting a gnomon towards the pole. For these simple calculations I had Hannay and Dietrichsen's Almanac, a copious publication which gave all the important data in the Nautical Almanac, besides much other interesting matter, useful for the astronomical amateur or the ordinary navigator. I also tried to make a telescope by purchasing a lens of about two feet focus at an optician's in Swansea, fixing it in a paper tube and using the eye-piece of a small opera glass. With it I was able to

observe the moon and Jupiter's satellites, and some of the larger star-clusters; but, of course, very imperfectly. Yet it served to increase my interest in astronomy, and to induce me to study with some care the various methods of construction of the more important astronomical instruments; and it also led me throughout my life to be deeply interested in the grand onward march of astronomical discovery.

But what occupied me chiefly and became more and more the solace and delight of my lonely rambles among the moors and mountains, was my first introduction to the variety, the beauty, and the mystery of nature as manifested in the vegetable kingdom.

I have already mentioned the chance remark which gave me the wish to know something about wild flowers, but nothing came of it till 1841, when I heard of and obtained a shilling paper-covered book published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the title of which I forget, but which contained an outline of the structure of plants and a short description of their various parts and organs; and also a good description of about a dozen of the most common of the natural orders of British plants. Among these were the Cruciferæ, Caryophylleæ, Leguminosa, Rosacea, Umbelliferæ, Compositæ, Scrophularineæ, Labiatæ, Orchideæ, and Glumaceæ. This little book was a revelation to me, and for a year was my constant companion. On Sundays I would stroll in the fields and woods, learning the various parts and organs of any flowers I could gather, and then trying how many of them belonged to any of the orders described in my book. Great was my delight when I found that I could identify a Crucifer, an Umbellifer, and a Labiate; and as one after another the different orders were recognized, I began to realize for the first time the order that underlay all the variety of nature. When my brother was away and there was no work to do, I would spend the greater part of the day wandering over the hills or by the streams gathering flowers, and either determining their position from my book, or coming to the conclusion that they belonged to other orders of which I knew nothing, and as time went on I found that

there were a very large number of these, including many of our most beautiful and curious flowers, and I felt that I must get some other book by which I could learn something about these also. But I knew of no suitable book, I did not even know that any British floras existed, and having no one to help me, I was obliged to look among the advertisements of scientific or educational publications that came in my way. At length, soon after we came to Neath, David Rees happened to bring in an old number of the Gardener's Chronicle, which I read with much interest, and as I found in it advertisements and reviews of books, I asked him to bring some more copies, which he did, and I found in one of them a notice of the fourth edition of Lindley's "Elements of Botany," which, as it was said to contain descriptions of all the natural orders, illustrated by numerous excellent woodcuts, I thought would be just the thing to help me on. The price, 10s. 6d., rather frightened me, as I was always very short of cash; but happening to have so much in my possession, and feeling that I must have some book to go on with, I ordered it at Mr. Hayward's shop.

When at length it arrived, I opened it with great expectations, which were, however, largely disappointed, for although the larger part of the book was devoted to systematic botany, and all the natural orders were well and clearly described, yet there was hardly any reference to British plants-not a single genus was described, it was not even stated which orders contained any British species and which were wholly foreign, nor was any indication given of their general distribution or whether they comprised numerous or few genera or species. The inclusion of all the natural orders and the excellent woodcuts illustrating many of them, and showing the systematic characters by dissections of the flowers and fruits, were, however, very useful, and enabled me at once to classify a number of plants which had hitherto puzzled me. Still, it was most unsatisfactory not to be able to learn the names of any of the plants I was observing, so one day I asked Mr. Hayward if he knew of any book that would help me. To my great delight he said he

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had Loudon's "Encyclopædia of Plants," which contained all the British plants, and he would lend it to me, and I could copy the characters of the British species.

I therefore took it home to Bryn-coch, and for some weeks spent all my leisure time in first examining it carefully, finding that I could make out both the genus and the species of many plants by the very condensed but clear descriptions, and I therefore copied out the characters of every British species there given. As Lindley's volume had rather broad margins, I found room for all the orders which contained only a moderate number of species, and copied the larger orders on sheets of thin paper, which I interleaved at the proper places. Having at length completed this work for all the flowering plants and ferns, and also the genera of mosses and the main divisions of the lichens and fungi, I took back the volume of Loudon, and set to work with increased ardour to make out all the species of plants I could find. This was very interesting and quite a new experience for me, and though in some cases I could not decide to which of two or three species my plant belonged, yet a considerable number could be determined without any doubt whatever.

This also gave me a general interest in plants, and a catalogue published by a great nurseryman in Bristol, which David Rees got from the gardener, was eagerly read, especially when I found it contained a number of tropical orchids, of whose wonderful variety and beauty I had obtained some idea from the woodcuts in Loudon's Encyclopædia. The first epiphytal orchid I ever saw was at a flowershow in Swansea, where Mr. J. Dillwyn Llewellyn exhibited a plant of Epidendrum fragrans, one of the less attractive kinds, but which yet caused in me a thrill of enjoyment which no other plant in the show produced. My interest in this wonderful order of plants was further enhanced by reading in the Gardener's Chronicle an article by Dr. Lindley on one of the London flower shows, where there was a good display of orchids, in which, after enumerating a number of the species, he added, "and Dendrobium Devonianum, too delicate and beautiful for a flower of earth." This and other references to

and descriptions of them gave them, in my mind, a weird and mysterious charm, which was extended even to our native species, and which, I believe, had its share in producing that longing for the tropics which a few years later was satisfied in the equatorial forests of the Amazon.

But I soon found that by merely identifying the plants I found in my walks I lost much time in gathering the same species several times, and even then not being always quite sure that I had found the same plant before. I therefore began to form a herbarium, collecting good specimens and drying them carefully between drying papers and a couple of boards weighted with books or stones. My brother, however, did not approve of my devotion to this study, even though I had absolutely nothing else to do, nor did he suggest any way in which I could employ my leisure more profitably. He said very little to me on the subject beyond a casual remark, but a letter from my mother showed me that he thought I was wasting my time. Neither he nor I could foresee that it would have any effect on my future life, and I myself only looked upon it as an intensely interesting occupation for time that would be otherwise wasted. Even when we were busy I had Sundays perfectly free, and used then to take long walks over the mountains with my collecting box, which I brought home full of treasures. I first named the species as nearly as I could do so, and then laid them out to be pressed and dried. At such times I experienced the joy which every discovery of a new form of life gives to the lover of nature, almost equal to those raptures which I afterwards felt at every capture of new butterflies on the Amazon, or at the constant stream of new species of birds, beetles, and butterflies in Borneo, the Moluccas, and the Aru Islands.

It must be remembered that my ignorance of plants at this time was extreme. I knew the wild rose, bramble, hawthorn, buttercup, poppy, daisy, and foxglove, and a very few others equally common and popular, and this was all. I knew nothing whatever as to genera and species, nor of the large numbers of distinct forms related to each other and

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