298 OBITUARY x 
showing the profound physiological significance of 
the apparently meaningless diversities of floral 
structure, his attention was keenly alive to any 
other interesting phenomena of plant life which 
came in his way. In his correspondence, he not 
unfrequently laughs at himself for his ignorance 
of systematic botany; and his acquaintance with 
vegetable anatomy and physiology was of the 
slenderest. Nevertheless, if any of the less 
common features of plant life came under his 
notice, that imperious necessity of seeking for 
causes which nature had laid upon him, impelled, 
and indeed compelled, him to inquire the how 
and the why of the fact, and its bearing on his 
general views. And as, happily, the atavic ten- 
dency to frame hypotheses was accompanied 
by an equally strong need to test them by well- 
devised experiments, and to acquire all possible 
information before publishing his results, the 
effect was that he touched no topic without 
elucidating it. 
Thus the investigation of the operations oft 
insectivorous plants, acolieds in the work on that 
topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years. 
before, by a passing observation made during one 
of Darwin’s rare holidays. 
“Tn the summer of 1860, I was idling aut 
resting near Hartfield, where two species © 
Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous 
insects had been entrapped by the leaves. 
