28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



for natural history, and more especially for collecting, 

 was well developed. I tried to make out the names 

 of plants,* and collected all sorts of things, shells, 

 seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for 

 collecting which leads a man to be a systematic 

 naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in 

 me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or 

 brother ever had this taste. 



One little event during this year has fixed itself 

 very firmly in my mind, and I hope that it has done 

 so from my conscience having been afterwards sorely 

 troubled by it ; it is curious as showing that appa- 

 rently I was interested at this early age in the varia- 

 bility of plants ! I told another little boy (I believe 

 it was Leighton, who afterwards became a well-known 

 lichenologist and botanist), that I could produce 

 variously coloured polyanthuses and primroses by 

 watering them with certain coloured fluids, which was 

 of course a monstrous fable, and had never been 

 tried by me. I may here also confess that as a 

 little boy I was much given to inventing deliberate 

 falsehoods, and this was always done for the sake of 

 causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered 

 much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid 

 it in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless 



* Rev. W. A. Leighton, who was could be discovered. Mr. Leighton 



a schoolfellow of my father's at Mr. goes on, "This greatly roused my 



Case's school, remembers his bring- attention and curiosity, and I in- 



ing a flower to school and saying quired of him repeatedly how this 



that his mother had taught him could be done?" but his lesson was 



how by looking at the inside of the naturally enough not transmissible, 



blossom the name of the plant F. D. 



