274 THE REV. J. G. WOOD. 



labours, but was well-informed on nearly every branch 

 of science, art, and literature, and took almost an equal 

 interest in all. Two huge extract-books now in my 

 possession are filled with curious scraps of information 

 on almost every imaginable subject, interspersed with 

 portraits of living or recently deceased celebrities, short 

 poems, generally of a humorous character (for he was 

 extremely fond of comic poetry, if characterised by true 

 wit), and biographical notices extracted from the daily 

 newspapers. Besides these he had fifteen or twenty 

 pocket-books, each given up to some special purpose, 

 three or four diaries in simultaneous use, a " memoriser," 

 in which were jotted down engagements principally 

 those for his sketch-lectures and a russian-leather case 

 or two for the safe carriage of letters or cuttings. Then 

 all his books, and especially those of reference, were 

 fully and carefully annotated. In his working-copy of 

 his own Natural History there is nearly as much 

 information in the form of fly-notes, pen-and-ink 

 additions, and neatly inserted extracts and sketches, as 

 in the three bulky volumes themselves. And, finally, 

 for every book which he wrote he constructed a special 

 note-book, in which were jotted down brief references 

 for every branch and detail of the ground which the 

 work was intended to cover. 



These notes, however, were usually very meagre, and 

 served merely to quicken his own memory as to things 

 which he had seen or read. A key-word or two, and 

 perhaps a few statistics : that, in many cases, is all ; 

 and the record, to anyone but himself, was practically 



