Ch. IV.] REMINISCENCES. 97 



accumulated in the " read " heap until the shelves overflowed, 

 and then, with much lamenting, a day was given up to the 

 cataloguing. He disliked this work, and as the necessity of 

 undertaking the work became imperative, would often say, in a 

 voice of despair, " We really must do these books soon." 



In each book, as he read it, he marked passages bearing on 

 his work. In reading a book or pamphlot, &c, he made 

 pencil-lines at the side of the page, often adding short 

 remarks, and at the end made a list of the pages marked. 

 When it was to be catalogued and put away, the marked 

 pages were looked at, and so a rough abstract of the book 

 was made. This abstract would perhaps be written under 

 three or four headings on different sheets, the facts being 

 sorted out and added to the previously collected facts in the 

 different subjects. He had other sets of abstracts arranged, 

 not according to subject, but according to the periodicals from 

 which they were taken. When collecting facts on a large 

 scale, in earlier years, he used to read through, and make 

 abstracts, in this way, of whole series of journals. 



In some of his early letters he speaks of filling several 

 note-books with facts for his book on species; but it was 

 certainly early that he adopted his plan of using portfolios, as 

 described in the Becollections.* My father and M. de Candolle 

 were mutually pleased to discover that they had adopted the 

 same plan of classifying facts. De Candolle describes tho method 

 in his Phytologie, and in his sketch of my father mentions the 

 satisfaction he felt in seeing it in action at Down. 



Besides these portfolios, of which there are some dozens 

 full of notes, there are large bundles of MS. marked " used " 

 and put away. He felt the value of his notes, and had a 

 horror of their destruction by fire. I remember, when some 

 alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be especially 

 careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest of his life would 

 be miserable if his notes and books were destroyed. 



He shows the same feeling in writing about the loss of a 

 manuscript, the purport of his words being, " I have a copy, 

 or the loss would have killed me." In writing a book he 

 would spend much time and labour in making a skeleton or 

 plan of the whole, and in enlarging and sub-classing each 

 heading, as described in his Becollections. I think this careful 

 arrangement of the plan was not at all essential to the building 

 up of his argument, but for its presentment, and for the 



* The racks in which the portfolios were placed are shown in the illus- 

 tration at the head of the chapter, in the recess at the right-hand side of 

 the fire-place. 



B 



