446 PEKSONALIA : 1898-1906 



Botany, besides attending the lectures of the Professor a 

 son of the late Professor Balfour. 



To Mrs. Paisley 



July 11, 1901. 



I cannot express to you the pleasure which my visit to 

 you gave me, chastened though it was by memories not 

 regrets. Then, too, the many familiar scenes of Helensburgh 

 and the Gareloch were more welcome to me than I could have 

 believed possible. The fact is that, beyond my own family, 

 your family and Helensburgh are the dearest of my memories 

 of Scotland, kept up as they were at Kew by my intimacy 

 with Archie, in his home, his office, and at our fortnightly 

 meetings at the Philosophical Club of the Koyal Society. 



I should indeed like to have seen the fleet of yachts. 

 I once saw them assembled at Eothesay, and they reminded 

 me of a flight of white butterflies in a lake in a tropical forest, 

 dancing and dipping on the surface of the water. 



It was on this occasion that he was taken round the Glasgow 

 Botanic Gardens by the curator, Mr. Christopher Sheney, who, 

 writing in 1912, thus describes the visit : 



I need scarcely say that he took a remarkably keen 

 interest in the various collections of flowering plants in the 

 greenhouses. It was, however, on his reaching the Moss 

 House that he expressed his keenest delight, as he evidently 

 never before saw such a large group, nearly four hundred 

 living species of mosses, together, and he was anxious to 

 know what induced me to cultivate them. 



I explained that being successful in securing the prize 

 offered by Professor Bayley Balfour for a collection of 

 British Musci and Hepaticae, I thought of trying the experi- 

 ment of growing them, in which I was more or less successful. 

 I was previously aware of Sir Joseph's vast knowledge of 

 flowering plants of all kinds, but was scarcely prepared to 

 find that his knowledge of these comparatively insignifi- 

 cant members of the vegetable kingdom was, if possible; 

 more vast. Nothing came amiss to him. The water moss, 

 Fontinalis antipyretica, Hookeria lucens (named in honour 

 of his father), the various species of the apple moss (Bar- 

 tramia), Splachnum sphaericum, and that other Alpine species 



