444 FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS. [1861. 



(far more than your dead Wedgwood ware can give you) ; 

 and I go and gloat over them, but we privately confessed to 

 each other, that if they were not our own, perhaps we should 

 not see such transcendent beauty in each leaf." 



And in March, when he was extremely unwell *he wrote : 



"A few words about the Stove-plants; they do so amuse 

 me. I have crawled to see them two or three times. Will 

 you correct and answer, and return enclosed. I have hunted 

 in all my books and cannot find these names,* and I like 

 much to know the family." 



The book was published May i5th, 1862. Of its reception 

 he writes to Murray, June i3th and i8th : 



** The Botanists praise my Orchid-book to the skies. Some 

 one sent me (perhaps you) the ' Parthenon/ with a good re- 

 view. The Athenceum f treats me with very kind pity and 

 contempt ; but the reviewer knew nothing of his subject." 



" There is a superb, but I fear exaggerated, review in the 

 ' London Review.' \ But I have not been a fool, as I thought 

 I was, to publish ; * for Asa Gray, about the most competent 

 judge in the world, thinks almost as highly of the book as 

 does the 'London Review.' The Athentzum will hinder the 

 sale greatly." 



The Rev. M. J. Berkeley was the author of the notice in 

 the ' London Review,' as my father learned from Sir J. D. 



* His difficulty with regard to the names of plants is illustrated, with 

 regard to a Lupine on which he was at work, in an extract from a letter 

 (July 21, 1866) to Sir J. D. Hooker : " I sent to the nursery garden, whence 

 I bought the seed, and could only hear that it was ' the common blue Lu- 

 pine,' the man saying 'he was no scholard, and did not know Latin, and 

 that parties who make experiments ought to find out the names.' " 



f May 24, 1862. 

 \ June 14, 1862. 



* Doubts on this point still, however, occurred to him about this time. 

 He wrote to Prof. Oliver (June 8): "I am glad that you have read my 

 Orchis-book and seem to approve of it ; for I never published anything 

 which I so much doubted whether it was worth publishing, and indeed I 

 still doubt. The subject interested me beyond what, I suppose, it is 

 worth." 



