98 REMINISCENCES. [ch. iv. 



fine himself to observing the single point to which the ex- 

 periment was directed, and his power of seeing a number of 

 other things was wonderful. I do not think he cared for 

 preliminary or rough observations intended to serve as 

 guides and to be repeated. Any experiment done was to be 

 of some use, and in this connection I remember how 

 strongly he urged the necessity of keeping the notes of ex- 

 periments which failed, and to this rule he always ad- 

 hered. 



In the literary part of his work he had the same horror 

 of losing time, and the same zeal in what he was doing at 

 the moment, and this made him careful not to be obliged 

 unnecessarily to read anything a second time. 



His natural tendency was to use simple methods and few 

 instruments. The use of the compound microscope has 

 much increased since his youth, and this at the expense of 

 the simple one. It strikes us nowadays as extraordinary 

 that he should have had no compound microscope when he 

 went his Beagle voyage ; but in this he followed the advice 

 of Robert Brown, who was an authority in such matters. 

 He always had a great liking for the simple microscope, 

 and maintained that nowadays it was too much neglected, 

 and that one ought always to see as much as possible with 

 the simple before taking to the compound microscope. In 

 one of his letters he speaks on this point, and remarks that 

 he suspects the work of a man who never uses the simple 

 microscope. 



His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window 

 of the study ; it was lower than an ordinary table, so that 

 he could not have worked at it standing ; but this, from 

 wishing to save his strength, he would not have done in any 

 case. He sat at his dissecting-table on a curious low stool 

 which had belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on 

 a vertical spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he 

 could turn easily from side to side. His ordinary tools, &c, 

 were lying about on the table, but besides these a number 

 of odds and ends were kept in a round table full of radiat- 

 ing drawers, and turning on a vertical axis, which stood 

 close by his left side, as he sat at his microscope-table. The 

 drawers were labelled, " best tools," " rough tools," " speci- 

 mens," " preparations for specimens," &c. The most marked 

 peculiarity of the contents of these drawers was the care 

 with which little scraps and almost useless things were pre- 

 served ; he held the well-known belief, that if you throw a 



