XX MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 



him botanical geography is not simply a gathering together 

 of statistics, and a working out of impersonal theoretical con- 

 clusions. His fondness for character-analysis led him so readily 

 from plants to people that he did not always remember how it 

 might pain a man to see his little weakness and shortcomings 

 pilloried in print. He loved an argument like a man who can 

 ride well loves a gallop on a spirited horse. He was accurate 

 and clear -headed to a wonderful degree ; he had a splendid 

 memory, he was unimaginative, and never worked in a hurry ; 

 and all this made him impatient of other people's bungling and 

 blundering. He was a pioneer, and in making a firm macadam- 

 ised road he had much rubbish to shovel away. He was a man 

 of warm temper and strong prejudices ; and if he once got a 

 notion that a man was radically careless or conceited, he did not 

 spare to slash at him in print whenever his name turned up. 

 One of his pet prejudices was an objection to new names for 

 plants, and the name-givers were a favourite target for his 

 arrows, And thus it comes that those old papers in the ' Phy- 

 tologist ' and the tail-paragraphs in the geographical books are 

 often full of lively personal interest. " Ah ! " he said more than 

 once during the latter years of his life, as we talked over these 

 things on the quiet Sunday afternoons, " they read too bitter. 

 You don't know what it is to have a large organ of destructive- 

 ness." 



But this same slashing critic was in some ways almost mor- 

 bidly self -distrustful and considerate of other people's feelings. 

 Although he wrote so much, he never seemed to like that his 

 books should be sold ; and so several of them never found their 

 way into the hands of the booksellers at all, but he gave all the 

 copies away, and never recouped himself one penny of the cost 

 of paper, print, and binding. He had a scruple against ever 

 inviting any one to pay him a visit, lest they should be bored ; 

 and sometimes when a botanist of a younger generation, who 

 was all the while looking up to him as a great master in science, 

 would venture to call uninvited, he would, after devoting several 



