298 OBITUARY X 



showing the profound physiological significance of 

 the apparently meaningless diversities of floral 

 structure, his attention was keenly alive to any 

 other interesting phenomena of plant life which 

 came in his way. In his correspondence, he not 

 unfrequently laughs at himself for his ignorance 

 of systematic botany ; and his acquaintance with 

 vegetable anatomy and physiology was of the 

 slenderest. Nevertheless, if any of the less 

 common features of plant life came under his 

 notice, that imperious necessity of seeking for 

 causes which nature had laid upon him, impelled, 

 and indeed compelled, him to inquire the how 

 and the why of the fact, and its bearing on his 

 general views. And as, happily, the atavic ten- 

 dency to frame hypotheses was accompanied 

 by an equally strong need to test them by well- 

 devised experiments, and to acquire all possible 

 information before publishing his results, the 

 effect was that he touched no topic without 

 elucidating it. 



Thus the investigation of the operations of 

 insectivorous plants, embodied in the work on that 

 topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years 

 before, by a passing observation made during one 

 of Darwin's rare holidays. 



" In the summer of 1860, I was idling and 

 resting near Hartfield, where two species of 

 Drosera abound ; and I noticed that numerous 

 insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I 



