26 Alexander Goodman More. [1852 



CHAPTER V. 



FRESH BREAK-DOWN IN HEALTH. 



[1852-1853.] 



THE barrier which his delicate health had reared in the 

 path of his university ambitions only wedded him the 

 more closely to scientific study. It was in 1852, he says 

 in his journal, that he " began really to study botany." 

 His purchase this year of Watson's " Cybele Britannica" 

 had doubtless much effect in influencing his mind in this 

 direction, for no other book so completely dominated his 

 whole line of thought, and throughout life, both as botanist 

 and zoologist, he was the most ardent of " Cybelizers." 

 The intervals between the Cambridge Terms were this 

 year all spent at Vectis Lodge, Bembridge, where, in the 

 long vacation, Mr. Walter Shawe-Taylor spent some time 

 with him; and he began to collect the plants of the sur- 

 rounding district. The chief materials accessible to a 

 student of the Isle of Wight flora at this time were the 

 scattered notes and papers published in the " Phytologist" 

 magazine by the celebrated Dr. Bromfield, whose death at 

 Damascus had occurred in the October of the preceding 

 year. Since 1836, when he first came to reside at Ryde, 

 Dr. Bromfield had been engaged in making preparations 

 for a complete Flora of the Isle of Wight ; but he was pre- 

 vented from bringing this work to a conclusion by the extra- 

 ordinary passion for travel which came upon him in the 

 midst of his botanical researches, and which, though he 

 first thought to appease it by a short trip to Ireland, " to 

 see the arbutus growing wild on the hills of Killarney," 

 finally appears to have taken irresistible possession of him, 

 carrying him off by turns to the West Indies, to the United 

 States and Canada, to Egypt and up the Nile to Khartoum, 

 and lastly through the Holy Land to Syria, where he died, 

 October gth, 1851. Dr. Bromfield's unfinished "Flora 



