HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES IN OLD AGE. 315 



course, exhibited to each other the specimens they had 

 gathered. In taking out his from the back pocket in his 

 long blue coat, John had the misfortune to pull out with 

 them his simple lunch, cake and cress, wrapped in paper, 

 which dropped on the floor of the carriage, greatly to the 

 amusement of the passengers and his own painful embar- 

 rassment. John, nevertheless, "gathered all the crumbs 

 and wrapped them up again as if they had been grains of 

 gold." 



To the last, he had a peculiar pleasure in using the 

 technical as well as the common names of plants, which he 

 did with the ease of long habit. During his later years, 

 some of them were beginning to escape him ; and he had 

 frequently to pause in order to recall them, and not seldom 

 failed in the more specific names. 



When I visited him in 1877, I asked him how he was 

 able to learn and remember the great Greek and Latin 

 words botany was so full of. " Ow, ye see," he explained, 

 " I had aye a gweed memory. But when I got a noo plant 

 and fund oot its name, I used to write it doon on a bit o' 

 paiper, and lay it on the wab afore me as I wis wirkin', to 

 glance at it noo and nan and say it ower to mysel', withoot 

 disturbin' my wark. I hae seen a gae lot o' thae words 

 lyin' afore me at the same time on my loom. And then 

 when I took a waalk, I wu'd tak' them oot o' my pooch, and 

 lairn them as I gaed alang.* But it wasna very muckle 

 trouble, for I had a gweed memory, and I was aye usin' 

 them, ye see, wi' the plants." 



There we have several of the secrets of true education 



* Amongst his papers, there remain a large gathering of such 

 memoriter pieces of paper, containing the names, etc., of plants. 



