86 REMINISCENCES. [ch. iv. 



make any effort of the kind, with comparative impunity. 

 Thus it came about that the visits he paid to his scientific 

 friends in London were by preference made as early as ten 

 in the morning. For the same reason he started on hi 



s 



journeys by the earliest possible train, and used to arrive at 

 the houses of relatives in London when they were beginning 

 their day. 



He kept an accurate journal of the days on which he 

 worked and those on which his ill health prevented him 

 from working, so that it would be possible to tell how many 

 were idle days in any given year. In this journal a little 

 yellow Letts's Diary, which lay open on his mantel-piece, 

 piled on the diaries of previous years he also entered the 

 day on which he started for a holiday and that of his return. 



The most frequent holidays were visits of a week to 

 London, either to his brother's house (6 Queen Anne Street), 

 or to his daughter's (4 Bryanston Street). He was generally 

 persuaded by my mother to take these short holidays, when 

 it became clear from the frequency of " bad days," or from 

 the swimming of his head, that he was being overworked. 

 He went unwillingly, and tried to drive hard bargains, stipu- 

 lating, for instance, that he should come home in five days 

 instead of six. The discomfort of a journey to him was, at 

 least latterly, chiefly in the anticipation, and in the miserable 

 sinking feeling from which he suffered immediately before 

 the start ; even a fairly long journey, such as that to Con- 

 iston, tired him wonderfully little, considering how much an 

 invalid he was ; and he certainly enjoyed it in an almost 

 boyish way, and to a curious degree. 



Although, as he has said, some of his aesthetic tastes had 

 suffered a gradual decay, his love of scenery remained fresh 

 and strong. Every walk at Coniston was a fresh delight, 

 and he was never tired of praising the beauty of the broken 

 hilly country at the head of the lake. 



Besides these longer holidays, there were shorter visits 

 to various relatives to his brother-in-law's house, close to 

 Leith Hill, and to his son near Southampton He always 

 particularly enjoyed rambling over rough open country, 

 such as the commons near Leith Hill and Southampton, the 

 heath-covered wastes of Ashdown Forest, or the delightful 

 " Rough " near the house of his friend Sir Thomas Farrer. 

 He never was quite idle even on these holidays, and found 

 things to observe. At Hartfield he watched Drosera catch- 

 ing insects, etc. ; at Torquay he observed the fertilisation of 



