MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 



And in the latest Flora of the English Lake 

 District, by Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S. (1885), the 

 name of * Miss Beever ' occurs again and again. 

 Under their care the garden of the Thwaite has 

 become famous not only for its flowers, for 

 its rarities domesticated among old cottage- 

 favourites, ideally picturesque, but for other 

 and more widely interesting associations. Ad- 

 mirers of Mr. Ruskin who have read the collec- 

 tion of his letters to these two ladies, published 

 under the title of Hortus Inclusus, knew some- 

 thing of their love for bird and beast, and 

 sympathies extended to human creatures, far 

 beyond the limits of their f garden enclosed.' 1 



Mr. John Beever, like his sisters, was a close 

 student of natural history. He was an ardent 

 sportsman and fisherman; but he was some- 

 thing more, a diligent and affectionate 

 observer, reflective, ingenious, logical. He at- 

 tributes his first lessons in this school to a 

 humble but very efficient teacher, * Frank, the 

 Matlock chaise-driver/ who, in Derbyshire days 

 it must have been about 1810 showed him 

 then a lad in his 'teens, the grand secret of an 

 art that seemed almost like magic. 



1 See also the Rev. W. Tuckwell's Tongties in Trees 

 and Sermons in Stones (George Allen), for illustrations 

 of the Thwaite and its garden. 



xiii 



