140 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



another side of his scientific character. Up to the very end, his 

 intense interest in new knowledge might put to the blush many 

 a younger man. It seemed extraordinary that it should never 

 flag. I well remember his ardent excitement on the return of the 

 Challenge?; laden with the spoils of four years' deep-sea explora- 

 tion. It was just the same at the British Association at South- 

 port, when he sat for hours at a time in the Biological section, 

 eager to hear the papers read by the younger men, and 

 delighted, when called upon, to speak words of approval and 

 encouragement. 



And not merely had he this vast appetite for knowledge, 

 but it was an appetite governed by perfect mastery. He 

 remembered all about everything which he had ever learnt. It 

 was a hazardous matter, therefore, to differ with him on a point 

 of historical detail, and on the one occasion when I ever found 

 myself in that predicament, I executed a very speedy strategic 

 retreat. I append a copy of a letter which he wrote me on that 

 occasion. It is in its way an interesting chapter of scientific 

 history, and illustrates in a manner which is still marvellous to 

 me in re-reading it, the perfect discipline in which he preserved 

 the detailed knowledge stored up in his mind. The letter is the 

 more important as it states, and I think with perfect accuracy, 

 what he claimed to have effected in some points of botanical 

 theory.* 



* To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, Esq. 



56, Regent's Park Road, July 7, 1875. 



Dear Mr. Thiselton-Dyer. — Glancing over your article in the new number 

 of the Microscopical Journal I see with some surprise that you credit De 

 Bary with being the first to point out that conjugation is the primitive phase 

 of sexual reproduction. For this was distinctly indicated by Thwaites in his 

 paper in the A7inals for March, 1848 ; and I myself more fully developed this 

 view in the British and Foreif^n Medico- Chiriwgical Review for October, 1848, 

 pp. 370, 371, and October, 1849, pp. 341-347, also p. 437, where I bring into 

 contrast ihe subdivision of cells as the type oi growth, and ^'' the mixture or 

 " reunion of the contents of two cells,'''' as the type o{ gcjieration. 



This, again, was explicitly set forth in my "General and Comparative 

 Physiology," 3rd edition, 1851, p. 881. 



The whole subject was at that date in a state of complete muddle ; and I 

 think I could easily show that I was one of the first to indicate the mode in 

 which the clearing-up would take place. In fact, I do not see that any essential 

 correction has been made in the views I expressed in pp. 346, 347 of the 

 RevircV oi Oclohtx, 1849, which no other vegetable physiologist, so far as I 

 know, had then reached, Thwaites having most nearly approached them. 



