56 JAMES BACKHOUSE. 
where we have probably a greater number of interesting alpine plants, 
including Zieracia, gathered together within a small space than any- 
where else in Britain, was his favourite district for a holiday ; and he 
was the discoverer, or one of the discoverers, of almost all the interest- 
ing plants that have been found there of late years,—as, for instance, 
Arenaria uliginosa, Polygala uliginosa, and Viola arenaria, all three of 
which were additions to the British flora. 
In person, Mr. Backhouse was below the average stature, and his 
long flowing grey beard, worn since the date of his travels, made hima 
man upon whom the eye fixed in a crowd. We are told that it was 
ouly by practice that he became fluent as a speaker, but that was before 
the time of our own knowledge of him. The great characteristics of 
his public addresses were earnestness and simplicity. He possessed a 
wonderful command of detail, and power of elucidating his ideas by 
apt illustrations and reminiscences; always clear, always practical, 
never aiming at ornament of style or soaring aloft to transcendental 
heights, or losing sight of the plain facts of life; in doctrinal theo- 
ries as ready to maintain his own opinions as to respect the sincere 
convictions of others; skilful, when controversy became unprofitable, 
with his pithy common-sense and ready illustrative faculty to pour oil 
upon the troubled waters. In private life he always seemed equally at 
home with old and young, and with people of all grades of education 
and conditions of station; free, as few are free, from taint of dogma- 
tism or worldliness or perversity or hastiness of temper, his unaffected 
sociability and geniality, and wide range of knowledge and sympathy, 
made his presence welcome wherever he came. 
The following anecdote of a botanical excursion, in which the pre- 
sent writer was his only companion, is eminently characteristic. We 
went to stay for a few days at alittle village in the centre of a tract of 
rocky hills which had never been searched botanically,—a hamlet of 
some two or three hundred inhabitants, so isolated that the post only 
came there twice a week ; and when a plot of strawberries were 
planted there a few years before our visit, three-fourths of the inhabi- 
tants were quite ignorant of what the fruit was like. The landed 
proprietor was non-resident, and we found that the mines on which 
the inhabitants principally depended had been very unproductive for 
several years. The only place of worship was an Independent chapel, 
with the minister of which the religious and mental culture of the 
