ng to ponder over the
_cause_ which led to the diverse formation and colouring of leaves
apparently of the same family.

It was in 1841, four years later, that he heard of, and at once
procured, a book published at a shilling by the S.P.C.K. (the title of
which he could not recall in after years), to which he owed his first
scientific glimmerings of the vast study of botany. The next step was to
procure, at much self-sacrifice, Lindley's "Elements of Botany,"
published at half a guinea, which to his immense disappointment he found
of very little use, as it did not deal with British plants! His
disappointment was lessened, however, by the loan from a Mr. Hayward of
London's "Encyclopedia of Plants," and it was with the help of these two
books that he made his first classification of the specimens which he
had collected and carefully kept during the few preceding years.

"It must be remembered," he says in "My Life," "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.... I knew nothing whatever as to genera and species, nor
of the large number of distinct forms related to each and grouped into
natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to
identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat
and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax,
and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed
parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial
diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly
understood, enabled me to locate each fresh species with greater ease."
This, however, was not sufficient, and the last step was to form a
herbarium.

"I soon found," he wrote, "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.... 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," he continues--and I have quoted the passage
for the sake of this revealing confession--"I experienced the joy which
every discovery of a