126 REMINISCENCES. 



the right point at which to give up an inquiry. And I think 

 it was his tendency to pass this point that inclined him to 

 apologise for his perseverance, and gave the air of doggedness 

 to his work. 



He often said that no one could be a good observer unless 

 he was an active theoriser. This brings me back to what 

 I said about his instinct for arresting exceptions : it was as 

 though he were charged with theorising power ready to flow 

 into any channel on the slightest disturbance, so that no fact, 

 however small, could avoid releasing a stream of theory, and 

 thus the fact became magnified into importance. In this way 

 it naturally happened that many untenable theories occurred 

 to him ; but fortunately his richness of imagination was 

 equalled by his power of judging and condemning the 

 thoughts that occurred to him. He was just to his theories, 

 and did not condemn them unheard ; and so it happened 

 that he was willing to test what would seem to most people 

 not at all worth testing. These rather wild trials he called 

 " fool's experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an exam- 

 ple I may mention that finding the cotyledons of Biophytum 

 to be highly sensitive to vibrations of the table, he fancied 

 that they might perceive the vibrations of sound, and there- 

 fore made me play my bassoon close to a plant. * 



The love of experiment was very strong in him, and I can 

 remember the way he would say, " I shan't be easy till I have 

 tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed 

 experimenting much more than work which only entailed 

 reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books 

 which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt 

 experimental work to be a rest or holiday. Thus, while work- 

 ing upon the 'Variations of Animals and Plants,' in 1860-61, 

 he made out the fertilisation of Orchids, and thought himself 

 idle for giving so much time to them. It is interesting to 

 think that so important a piece of research should have been 



*This is not so much an example of superabundant theorising from a 

 small cause, but only of his wish to test the most improbable ideas. 



