i88s.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



59 



a gratuity or stated fee expects to get cash for ser- 

 vices rendered. The merchant especially regards 

 the money value of time ; but men like Charles 

 Downing must work continually, day in and day 

 out, from January to December, seeking only the 

 good of others. This was especially the lot of 

 this good man, and not to work merely, but go 

 cheerfully and uncomplainingly along. Not always, 

 however, is this great sacrifice made without some 

 thought of its cost. It is only a few weeks ago 

 that we had a letter from our good friend on this 

 very topic, which it is yet too sacred with the mark 

 of privacy to use in full. We may say, however, 

 that it told of his early struggles to be useful in 

 the literature of pomology, and of the troubles 

 and disappointments of finding publishers to give 

 to the world his works. Even where he had been 

 successful in this, all that he had received from 

 his huge labors in many cases was a few copies of 

 his own work to give to his friends. 



Possibly some one will arise who will follow 

 closely in his steps and continue in the good work 

 just as he would have pursued it ; but the experi- 

 ence of history is against the thought. There will 

 be but one Charles Downing ; and as we lay his 

 remains in the grave, the tears of American po- 

 mology everywhere drop over them as for its 

 greatest treasure gone beyond recall. 



Ch.\rles Darwin. — Lives of this great man 

 will soon come from the Enghsh press. One has 

 recently appeared, of which a reviewer in an 

 English daily paper says : 



" Darwin was a native of Shrewsbury, and it 

 was eminently fitting that a Shropshire man 

 should communicate a sketch of his life and 

 works to the county Archaeological Society, and 

 that the same should be given to the world. The, 

 'Proud Salopians' have indeed something to be 

 proud of in that their county town gave birth to 

 Darwin, and only less fortunate is Staffordshire, 

 for Darwin's grandfather was in a sense a Lich- 

 field man, and he and his family were very inti- 

 mately associated by marriage with the Wedg- 

 woods. Charles Darwin's father married a daugh- 

 ter of Josiah Wedgwood, the eminent potter; 

 Darwin himself married his cousin, a daughter of 

 the second Josiah Wedgwood ; and a sister of 

 Darwin also married into the same family. All 

 necessary facts relating to Darwin's family history 

 are clearly set forth in Mr. Woodall's monograph, 

 and we have some original information respecting 

 his schoolboy days, contributed by two of his 

 schoolfellows who survive him. Darwin, who 

 had little taste for the classics, used to say that 

 Euclid, done as an extra subject, was the only bit 

 of real education which he got at Shrewsbury 

 Grammar School. Under the famous Dr. Butler, 

 classics were everything at Shrewsbury, and there- 



fore it was not surprising that Darwin won little 

 distinction there. The Rev. W. A. Leighton says 

 he was reserved and fond of long, solitary ram- 

 bles ; but another schoolfellow, the Rev. J. Yard- 

 ley, recollects him as a "cheerful, good-tempered, 

 and communicative" lad, qualities which, as Mr. 

 Woodall remarks, certainly distinguished him in 

 afterlife. He subsequently studied at Edinburgh 

 and Cambridge, and took the B.A. and M.A. de- 

 grees in the ordinary course." 



Rev. James Sprunt. — We note by a brief para- 

 graph in a Baltimore paper that Dr. Sprunt died 

 recently at his home in Duplin county. North 

 Carolina. He was among the first of the corres- 

 pondents of the Editor of this magazine, and sent 

 to him for examination flowers of a rose that had 

 sported from Safrano ; and with the Editor's en- 

 couragement it was propagated, proved perma- 

 nent, and finally became the well-known "Isabella 

 Sprunt," which to this day holds its own as one of 

 the most popular tea roses. Mr. Sprunt was very 

 fond of gardening, and his home in Kenansville, to 

 judge from his enthusiastic correspondence, must 

 have been a very pleasant place. He was a 

 Scotchman by birth, but settled as a Presbyterian 

 clergyman, at Kenansville. On the breaking out 

 of the rebellion he became chaplain of the 20th 

 North Carolina Infantry. Since the end of the 

 war he was Register of Deeds for Duplin county. 



The Agricultural Grasses of the United 

 States. — By Dr. George Vasey. Washington ; 

 published by the Department of Agriculture. To 

 the many good deeds of the Department one more 

 has been added in the shape of this book. Efforts 

 were made by a wide distribution of circulars to 

 find out what grasses were in any way identified 

 with agriculture throughout the length and breadth 

 of the land. We have 163 of them here described, 

 and 1 20 figured in lithographic plates, and all 

 that is known of them placed on record. 



The People's Farm and Stock Cyclopedia. 

 — By Waldo F. Brown. Published by Jones Broth- 

 ers & Co., Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis. 



The first impression in receiving a book of this 

 kind is that so much has already appeared of this 

 class, that there is no room for more ; but the truth 

 is that many " Farmers' Cyclopedias" are just the 

 kind to make a sensible, practical farmer become 

 disgusted with " book learning." Looking careful- 

 ly through this book, however, we are free to say 

 that it is not of the mere made-up kind — but is of a 

 thoughtful, discriminative and judicious character, 

 creditable in everyway to the high position to which 

 American agriculture is steadily advancing. The 

 editor and leading contributor tells us that though 



