150 REMINISCENCES OF 



had penetrated. Inflamed absorbents were followed 

 by epilepsy, and my medical friends insisted upon 

 my retiring from private practice for fifteen months, 

 and abandoning my town residence for a more 

 suburban one. Purchasing some land in the village 

 of Fallowfield, a little more than three miles south 

 of the Manchester Exchange, I had a house built 

 and a large garden constructed. After returning to 

 practice, I began to build hothouses, and gradually 

 supplied myself with a number sufficient to cultivate 

 all such plants as were required for my botanical 

 classes. As time went on, garden and glass- 

 houses gave me everything a professor of botany 

 could need. Most of the rarer cryptogams, salvinias, 

 marsileas, lycopodiaceous plants of almost every 

 type grew most abundantly ; orchids, saracenias, and 

 four or five of the finest type of drosera flourished 

 in profusion, and I reared dionaeas from my own 

 seed ; thus ample provision was made for the 

 supply of every want when the extension of 

 botanical teaching, and especially the creation of the 

 laboratory department, increased my requirements 

 in the shape of specimens for dissection and micro- 

 scopic study. 



In the early summer of 1870, I took my family 

 into Switzerland. In Paris I had several palaeo- 

 botanical discussions with Professor Brongniart. 

 From Paris we went to Strasburg, where I had 

 arranged to spend some hours with Dr. Schimper. 

 We then reached the Oberland by way of Schaff- 



