Ch. IV.] BEMINISCENCES. 93 



His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window of 

 the study; it was lower than an ordinary table, so that he 

 could not have worked at it standing ; but this, from wishing 

 to save his strength, ho would not have done in any case. He 

 sat at his dissocting-table on a curious low stool which had 

 belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on a vertical 

 spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he could turn 

 easily from side to side. His ordinary tools, &c, were lying 

 about on the table, but besides these a number of odds and 

 ends were kept in a round table full of radiating drawers, and 

 turning on a vertical axis, which stood close by his left side, 

 as ho sat at his microscope-table. The drawers were labelled, 

 "best tools," "rough tools," "specimens," "preparations for 

 specimens," &c. The most marked peculiarity of the contents 

 of these drawers was the care with which little scraps and 

 almost useless things were preserved ; he held the well-known 

 belief, that if you threw a thing away you were sure to want it 

 directly — and so things accumulated. 



If any one had looked at his tools, &c, lying on the table, 

 he would have been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, 

 and oddity. 



At his right hand were shelves, with a number of other odds 

 and ends, glasses, saucers, tin biscuit boxes for germinating 

 seeds, zinc labels, saucers full of sand, &c, &c. Considering 

 how tidy and methodical he was in essential things, it is 

 curious that he bore with so many make-shifts : for instance, 

 instead of having a box made of a desired shape, and stained 

 black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted 

 and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking ; he did not care 

 to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated 

 seeds, but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a 

 narrow angle sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much 

 of his experimenting was of a simple kind, that he had no need 

 for any elaboration, and I think his habit in this respect was 

 in great measure due to his desire to husband his strength, and 

 not waste it on inessential things. 



His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he 

 had a number of things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, 

 &c, he tied threads of different colours round them. In 

 particular he used this method when he had only two classes of 

 objects to distinguish ; thus in the case of crossed and self- 

 fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with black and one 

 with white thread, tied round the stalk of tho flower. I 

 remember well the look of two sets of capsules, gathered and 

 waiting to be weighed, counted, &c,, with pieces of black and 



