78 THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN 



uttered a joke which could raise a blush. . . . 

 His discourses were delivered as he walked, 

 and he never lost an opportunity of saying a 

 wise and instructive word to his young dis- 

 ciples some of whom even now confess that 

 principles which guided them in mature years 

 were installed into their minds by this simple- 

 hearted old botanist." 



But his appearance was striking. One day 

 when a party of five were returning from a 

 botanical excursion near Maidstone, and 

 Wheeler was on the box with his hair blown 

 over his face, laughing and chatting with the 

 driver, and extracting plants from his hat, an 

 excited toll-keeper congratulated the herbor- 

 izers on having found the lunatic for whose 

 capture a reward had been offered. 



Wheeler was not only a botanist devoted to 

 his master, Linnaeus, but a classical scholar ; 

 and students had to be careful of their Latin. 

 But conversational Latin was almost dead. 

 Yet a few years earlier, Linnaeus had thought it 

 waste of time to learn any language except 

 Latin and his own native tongue. Everyone in 

 Europe with whom he cared to talk even 

 Philip Miller, the gardener could talk Latin. 



If Latin had been retained as a universal 

 language, it might not have been necessary to 

 invent a universal gibberish to mitigate the 

 curse of Babel which falls so heavily on 

 international congresses. 



Semple says that from the age of forty until 

 his death, Wheeler " entirely abstained from 

 fermented liquors, not from any ascetic feel- 

 ing," but because he " found himself better 



