92 REMINISCENCES. [Cfl. IT. 



roots was done carefully and necessarily slowly, but the inter- 

 mediate movements were all quick ; taking a fresh bean, seeing 

 that the root was healthy, impaling it on a pin, fixing it on a 

 cork, and seeing that it was vertical, &c. ; all these processes 

 were performed with a kind of restrained eagerness. He gave 

 one the impression of working with pleasure, and not with 

 any drag. I have an image, too, of him as he recorded the 

 result of some experiment, looking eagerly at each root, &c, 

 and then writing with equal eagerness. I remember the quick 

 movement of his head up and down as he looked from the 

 object to the notes. 



He saved a great deal of time through not having to do 

 things twice. Although he would patiently go on repeating 

 experiments where there was any good to be gained, he could 

 not endure having to repeat an experiment which ought, if 

 complete care had been taken, to have told its story at first — 

 and this gave him a continual anxiety that the experiment 

 should not be wasted ; he felt the experiment to be sacred, 

 however slight a one it was. He wished to learn as much as 

 possible from an experiment, so that he did not confine himself 

 to observing the single point to which the experiment was 

 directed, and his power of seeing a number of other things was 

 wonderful. I do not think he cared for preliminary or rough 

 observations intended to serve as guides and to be repeated. 

 Any experiment done was to be of some use, and in this con- 

 nection I remember how strongly he urged the necessity of 

 keeping the notes of experiments which failed, and to this rule 

 he always adhered. 



In the literary part of his work he had the same horror of 

 losing time, and the same zeal in what he was doing at the 

 moment, and this made him careful not to be obliged unneces- 

 sarily to read anything a second time. 



His natural tendency was to use simple methods and few 

 instruments. The use of the compound microscope has much 

 increased since his youth, and this at the expense of the simple 

 one. It strikes us nowadays as extraordinary that he should 

 have had no compound microscope when he went his Beagle 

 voyage ; but in this he followed the advice of Robert Brown, 

 who was an authority in such matters. He always had a great 

 liking for the simple microscope, and maintained that now- 

 adays it was too much neglected, and that one ought always to 

 see as much as possible with the simple before taking to the 

 compound microscope. In one of his letters he speaks on this 

 point, and remarks that he suspects the work of a man who 

 never uses the simple microscope. 



