IMAGINAEY DISSIPATIONS 63 



I 



I^P Landscape drawing was by no means one of the lighter 

 occupations banned by Sir WiUiam. Like his father-in-law, 



I^J}awson Turner, the friend and connexion of Cotman, he cared 

 ^k)r art beyond his own botanical draughtsmanship. * I rejoice 

 *^hat you make drawings of scenery. They will be invaluable.' 

 And in the same strain his shipmate Dayman writes on 

 August 27, 1841, from Tasmania to Hooker in New Zealand : 



1^ I am particularly happy that you have found the drawings 

 you made on the passage out to be of more value than you 

 expected — ^if it be only as an encouragement to make more, 

 for upon my word without flattery (which you know by 

 this time I am incapable of) if you do not something of the 

 kind, I do not know who will. As far as poor McC[ormick] 

 is concerned, one of the main objects of the Expedition has 

 already failed. 



Valuable as his zoological researches were, both in satis- 

 fying his restless intellectual interests and in giving him fuller 

 understanding of living Nature, his father — strict botanist of 

 the older school — mistrusted any swerving from the closest 

 allegiance to botany. He took alarm at the remark (Febru- 

 ary 3, 1840), * My time has been so completely occupied 

 with sea animals that I have little time for other drawing.' 

 When he showed his son's first collections to Eobert Brown 

 he diplomatically abstained from mentioning these zoological 

 dissipations, for * Brown's idea is that without neglecting 

 such things, your time even at sea ought to be mainly devoted 

 to studying the plants you have collected,' a thing that proved 

 easier to do in the calm of the pack-ice than on the unquiet 

 expanse of the Southern Ocean. 



Nor was this his only stricture. To try too much is to 

 become ineffectual. He urges his son to stick to botanical 

 work exclusively — to avoid wasting his time in unnecessary 

 entertainments ; counsel indeed scarcely needed for one who 

 cared so Httle for the ordinary attractions of society. But 

 Sir WilHam's definition of frivoHty is strangely wide. 



The first halting- place of the expedition was the beautiful 

 island of Madeira, lovely with semi-tropical vegetation, and 



