124 REMINISCENCES. 



flower. I remember well the look of two sets of capsules, 

 gathered and waiting to be weighed, counted, &c., with pieces 

 of black and of white thread to distinguish the trays in which 

 they lay. When he had to compare two sets of seedlings, 

 sowed in the same pot, he separated them by a partition of 

 zinc-plate ; and the zinc label, which gave the necessary de- 

 tails about the experiment, was always placed on a certain 

 side, so that it became instinctive with him to know without 

 reading the label which were the "crossed " and which were 

 the "self-fertilised." 



His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal 

 not to lose the fruit of it, came out markedly in these cross- 

 ing experiments in the elaborate care he took not to make 

 any confusion in putting capsules into wrong trays, &c., &c. 

 I can recall his appearance as he counted seeds under the 

 simple microscope with an alertness not usually characterising 

 such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified 

 each seed as a small demon trying to elude him by getting 

 into the wrong heap, or jumping away altogether ; and this 

 gave to the work the excitement of a game. He had great 

 faith in instruments, and I do not think it naturally occurred 

 to him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or measuring glass, 

 &c. He was astonished when we found that one of his mi- 

 crometers differed from the other. He did not require any 

 great accuracy in most of his measurements, and had not 

 good scales ; he had an old three-foot rule, which was the 

 common property of the household, and was constantly being 

 borrowed, because it was the only one which was certain to 

 be in its place unless, indeed, the last borrower had forgot- 

 ten to put it back. For measuring the height of plants he 

 had a seven-foot deal rod, graduated by the village carpenter. 

 Latterly he took to using paper scales graduated to milli- 

 meters. For small objects he used a pair of compasses and 

 an ivory protractor. It was characteristic of him that he took 

 scrupulous pains in making measurements with his somewhat 

 rough scales. A trifling example of his faith in authority is 

 that he took his " inch in terms of millimeters " from an old 



