THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 15 



Norton. Mr Norton showed his appreciation of the 

 gift by publishing in America a little volume entitled 

 The Poet Gray as a Naturalist, in which he presents us 

 with a selection of Gray's notes and with facsimiles of 

 some of the pages. The notes, written in a small, clear 

 handwriting, reveal the poet's accuracy and power of 

 observation, while the sketches illustrate the excellence 

 of his drawings, especially of birds and insects. This 

 interleaved copy of Linnaeus remains the chief memorial 

 of Gray's occupation during the last few years of his life. 

 Mr Norton does not tell us what became of the poet's 

 copy of Hudson's Flora, but the interleaved Linnaeus 

 has found a home in Harvard University Library. 



So many are the allusions to wild flowers in Crabbe's 

 poems that readers of The Borough and The Talcs would 

 naturally infer that the poet must have been a botanist. 

 And the conclusion is abundantly confirmed by what 

 we learn from other sources. " From early life to his 

 latest years," his son tells us in an interesting Memoir, 

 " my father cultivated the study of botany with fond 

 zeal, both in books and in the fields." While practising 

 as an apothecary at Aldeburgh, and afterwards as a 

 clergyman in Leicestershire and in Suffolk, George 

 Crabbe found in botany his main recreation. Like his 

 own " village priest " in Tales of the Hall, 



" He knew the plants in mountain, wood, and mead ; 



... all that lived or moved 

 Were books to him ; he studied them and loved." 



It was his custom to copy into notebooks long passages 

 from rare or expensive works on botany, " of which his 

 situation could only permit him to obtain a temporary 

 loan." Several of these notebooks have been happily 



