( Ixxxiii ) 



Time went on, and conditions changed. I found myself located 

 in London, and it was but rarely I could pursue my still-absorbing 

 study in the field. But the changed conditions gave me an 

 opportunity of consulting the literature I had craved for. My 

 evenings were spent at the London Institution in Finsbury 

 Circus. The librarian was E. W. Brayley, to whose memory I 

 pay a debt of gratitude. Brayley was not a naturalist, but an 

 archaeologist of repute ; he took an interest in my pursuits, and 

 to some purpose, as the sequel will show. 



Li 1855 it was deemed advisable I should take a long voyage, 

 and, during one of thirteen months' duration, two months or more 

 were spent in New South Wales, where all my energies were 

 devoted to plant-collecting, plants of a strange land, and for 

 which my earlier studies afforded little help. I managed to name 

 most of them at the Sydney Botanic Gardens, but there remained 

 a residuum of indeterminata. Upon arriving home I sought the 

 late R. Kippist, Librarian to the Linnean Society, to whom I had 

 a previous introduction from my friend of the London Institution, 

 and he in turn gave me an introduction to Robert Brown, then 

 Keeper of the Botanical Department of the British Museum. 

 Could anything have been more auspicious ? I had Australian 

 plants to name, and Robert Brown was the chief authority on 

 the Botany of Australia. He received me courteously, but, 

 as I then thought, somewhat austerely (I now wonder why 

 he took so much trouble over a mere boy). He brought down 

 bundle after bundle of plants, and satisfied most of my require- 

 ments ; and then he proceeded to read me so severe a lecture that 

 my heart sank within me. The burthen of it was to the effect 

 that I should not have come to him to get names for plants 

 without having previously endeavoured to determine them from 

 descriptions. The reli)uke was accepted meekly ; my previous 

 studies had made it so far applicable that I could not do other- 

 wise. Whether Robert Brown acted on the spur of the moment, 

 or whether he thought my case a suitable one on which to 

 experiment, I know not. We never met again, but his memory 

 lives in my respect — he drove the wedge home to its thick end. 



What induced me to practically abandon Botany for Entomo- 

 logy, as a speciality, 1 scarcely know. My Autobiography ends 

 here. I joined this Society in 1858, and the rest is pretty well 

 known. 



