THE K.O.S.L 151 



me, on hearing of which I wrote to him begging him not, 

 as I thought so rare an honor should be confined to actual 

 Indian servants. He answered that he would have given it 

 me, but implied that the Statutes of the Order forbade it ! 

 so I never thought anything more of the matter. It is as 

 you say a ' peculiar ' honor and I may well be proud of it 

 and of the way it came. 



Is this not a jolly strain of self-gratulation and 

 glorification ? 



Meantime the Genera Plantarum progressed slowly. He 

 was compelled to leave his share of it aside, ' having,' as he 

 tells Asa Gray (July 20, 1874), 



so very few continuous days and half days to give to it, and 

 I cannot work it as I can Flora Indica, &c., by jerks. The 

 latter has given me unexpected trouble. (With two excep- 

 tions, one of whom was his Assistant, Dyer), no one has 

 worked well, and I had no idea how difficult it appears to 

 be a middling systematist even. 



Some of the work, indeed, he had wholly to re-do. 



Other botanical work which claims particular mention 

 includes the Botanical Primer for Macmillan's Science Series, 

 ' to keep company with Huxley and Tyndall,' and researches 

 into carnivorous plants. 



Of the former, which was published in 1876, he writes to 

 Darwin, February 20, 1873 : 



I have no news except of my own folly. I have under- 

 taken the Botany Primer for Macmillan which will be some 

 100 12mo pages of a sort [of] Introduction to the subject 

 of Botany something different I think from an elementary 

 lesson-book, and yet the information must be definite, and 

 such as the recipient can be questioned about. I have 

 given the subject a great deal of thought and sketched out 

 a plan. The great difficulty is to go to the bottom of things 

 and yet avoid detail or rather to keep pointing to the 

 bottom of things without going into it. I am afraid it will 

 be like the Sailor's ' Potato and Point,' which, as I daresay 

 you remember, consisted in a plate of potato and one 

 odoriferous red herring hung over the mess table. At every 



