74 THE SOUTH AND ITS SCIENTIFIC SCOPE 



however, whenever my foot has touched terra firma, there is 

 a sort of magic in the place that makes me grievously loth 

 to quit it again. There are also peculiar emotions attend- 

 ing the seeing new countries for the first time, which are 

 quite indescribable. I never felt as I did on drawing near 

 Madeira and probably never shall again. Every knot that 

 the ship approached called up new subjects of enquiry, and 

 so it is with every new land or even every barren rock. 

 It was the same on approaching the Cape and viewing 

 Table Mountain ; I could have, and did, sit for hours 

 wondering whether this knoll was covered with heaths or 

 Butaceae, whether this rill produced the Wardia, or that 

 rock the Andraea, where was Ludwigsberg, Wynberg, the 

 tree fern and all the spots which the mind associates with 

 our mutual pursuits, our friends, or our home. Selfish as 

 I doubtless am and proved myself to be at home, there is 

 one idea, the prosecution of which I often dream of, and 

 .that is, to tell, of all other persons, my father, mother, and 

 brother of what I have seen ; I never view a new scene 

 but I think what pleasure it will give me to view it over 

 again with you all, to map to you the places where my 

 specimens were gathered, to paint the views to my mother 

 and to spin to William the yarns of incidents that befell my 

 excursions, while grandpapa and my sisters will look upon 

 me as * the Monkey that has seen the world.' 



As his field of study becomes more suggestive we see his 

 work passing from the collector's individual notes to the wider 

 questions of geographical distribution, so attractive to the 

 range of his mind. The details become the tissue of his 

 generalisations. 



The earliest botanical impressions de voxjage for instance, at 

 Madeira, overflow with his delight at finding the rich plant 

 life, known heretofore only from books and dried specimens, 

 now flourishing in semi-tropical exuberance. The experimental 

 cultivation of the tea plant appeals instantly to the practical 

 instinct which did so much for commercial botany in the 

 years to come. So too the ' cabbage ' of Kerguelen's Land, 

 an excellent food for sailors, and the Tussac, or Tussock, 

 grass of the Falklands, with its prospect of accKmatisation 



