Botanical Work. 95 



CHAPTER XIV. 



BOTANICAL WORK. 



[1858.] 



FROM pursuing zoology and botany together, he was apt 

 to be struck with differences in the modes of treatment 

 applied in these two departments of Natural History. 

 Mr. Watson's method in botany appeared to him worth 

 applying to the domain of the zoologist also, and in com- 

 bination with his entomological friend, Mr. Thomas Boyd, 

 he resolved on its experimental application to the butter- 

 flies of Great Britain. The result was an essay which 

 appeared in the "Zoologist" for April, 1858, and which, 

 with a prefatory note by Mr. W. F. Kirby, is reprinted 

 as an Appendix to the present memoir. As Mr. Kirby 

 points out, the publication of this article led to a corre- 

 spondence between him and Mr. More, which extended over 

 several years previously to their meeting one another in 

 Dublin. 



At the same time he made what he calls in his Journal 

 his "first attempt at reviewing": an elaborate analysis 

 of that part of De Candolle's " Geographic Botanique 

 Raisonniee," which treats of the Naturalized Plants of 

 Great Britain. This appeared (unsigned*) in the " Phyto- 

 logist" for June. But the greater part of the summer was 

 devoted to an arduous piece of work which he had under- 

 taken for the Isle of Wight Philosophical and Scientific 



* But easily traceable to its author, even apart from the mention of it in his 

 Journal. The special reference to Ireland (excluded from De Candolle's range), 

 and particularly to the Sisyrinchium anceps ("blue-eyed grass" of Canada) 

 found at Woodford, county Gahvay, is scarcely more characteristic of the writer 

 than is the following passage, containing one of those ornithological allusions in 

 which, in the midst of a botanical study, he loved to indulge : 



"The absence from the list (of aliens) of such plants as grow in saline situa- 

 tions on the coast is worthy of attention, and seems to disprove any recent trans- 

 port by marine currents ; and in the same way the pappus of the Compositae and 



