72 REMINISCENCES [Oh. IV. 



boughs ; the little wood " Hangrove," just above this, he was 

 also fond of, and here I remember his collecting grasses, when 

 he took a fancy to make out the names of all the common 

 kinds. He was fond of quoting the saying of one of his little 

 boys, who, having found a grass that his father had not seen 

 before, had it laid by his own plate during dinner, remarking, 

 ' I are an extraordinary grass-finder ! " 



My father much enjoyed wandering idly in the garden 

 with my mother or some of his children, or making one of 

 a party, sitting on a bench on the lawn ; he generally sat, 

 however, on the grass, and I remember him often lying under 

 one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green mound at 

 its foot. In dry summer weather, when we often sat out, the 

 fly-wheel of the well was commonly heard spinning round, and 

 so the sound became associated with those pleasant days. He 

 used to like to watch us playing at lawn-tennis, and often 

 knocked up a stray ball for us with the curved handle of his 

 stick. 



Though he took no personal share in the management of 

 the garden, he had great delight in the beauty of flowers — for 

 instance, in the mass of Azaleas which generally stood in 

 the drawing-room. I think he sometimes fused together his 

 admiration of the structure of a flower and of its intrinsic 

 beauty ; for instance, in the case of the big pendulous pink 

 and white flowers of Diclytra. In the same way he had an 

 affection, half-artistic, half-botanical, for the little blue Lobelia. 

 In admiring flowers, he would often laugh at the dingy high- 

 art colours, and contrast them with the bright tints of nature. 

 I used to like to hear him admire the beauty of a flower ; it 

 was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself, and a personal love 

 for its delicate form and colour. I seem to remember him 

 gently touching a flower he delighted in ; it was the same 

 simple admiration that a child might have. 



He could not help personifying natural things. This feeling 

 came out in abuse as well as in praise — e.g. of some seedlings 

 — " The little beggars are doing just what I don't want them 

 to." He would speak in a half-provoked, half-admiring way 

 of the ingenuity of the leaf of a Sensitive Plant in screwing 

 itself out of a basin of water in which he had tried to fix it. 

 One might see the same spirit in his way of speaking of 

 Sundew, earthworms, &c* 



* Cf. Leslie Stephen's Swift, 1882, p. 200, where Swift's inspection of 

 the manners and customs of servants are compared to my father's observa- 

 tions on worms, " The difference is," says Mr. Stephen, " that Darwin had 

 none but kindly feelings for worms." 



