238 WRITING AND CONSERVATISM 



Mr. Potter replied that a diet of suet puddings was 

 hardly appropriate for a man of Professor Babington's 

 age, which drew from Newton a postcard : 



" Sweet not Suet puddings have been the bane of 

 C. C. B. The latter are not only excellent but, in 

 moderation, harmless. Excuse my bad writing. A. N." 



Most of his letter- writing was done in the morning 

 after a late breakfast. The afternoon he usually spent 

 in his room at the Museum, and late at night he did 

 the greater part of his writing : 



As for working at night I am sorry to hear that you 

 object so much to it. For the last 20 years and more 

 nearly all my best head work (if any of it has deserved 

 such an epithet) has been done between 10 p.m. and 

 2 a.m. simply because it is only then that I can ensure 

 being free from interruption. It is true that one 

 might get 4 hours in the very early morning but then 

 one must interfere with other people's hours about 

 getting up servants' especially for I could not under- 

 take to do anything without breakfast and a fire, and I 

 don't think I am really the worse on the whole for my 

 early hours.* 



He was almost meticulously exact in his writings, 

 which made him a slow worker, as it took him some 

 minutes to get up from his chair, find a required 

 passage in a book, and return to his chair. 



. . . such reputation as I have for accuracy, and I 

 will not pretend to say that it is not to some extent 

 deserved. I have from time to time come an " awful 

 howler " for, do what you will, such things are not 

 always to be avoided, j 



The " Dictionary of Birds," with its thousands of 



* Letter to Thomas Southwell January 21, 1888. 

 t Letter to R. Holt- White, April, 1907. 



