vii] BEDFORDSHIRE: SURVEYING ill 



began to feel the influence of nature and to wish to know 

 more of the various flowers, shrubs, and trees I daily met 

 with, but of which for the most part I did not even know the 

 English names. At that time I hardly realized that there 

 was such a science as systematic botany, that every flower 

 and every meanest and most insignificant weed had been 

 accurately described and classified, and that there was any 

 kind of system or order in the endless variety of plants and 

 animals which I knew existed. This wish to know the 

 names of wild plants, to be able even to speak of them, and 

 to learn anything that was known about them, had arisen 

 from a chance remark I had overheard about a year before. 

 A lady, who was governess in a Quaker family we knew at 

 Hertford, was talking to some friends in the street when I 

 and my father met them, and stayed a few moments to greet 

 them. I then heard the lady say, " We found quite a rarity 

 the other day — the Monotropa ; it had not been found here 

 before." This I pondered over, and wondered what the 

 Monotropa was. All my father could tell me was that it 

 was a rare plant; and I thought how nice it must be to 

 know the names of rare plants when you found them. How- 

 ever, as I did not even know there were books that described 

 every British plant, and as my brother appeared to take no 

 interest in native plants or animals, except as fossils, nothing 

 came of this desire for knowledge till a few years later. 



Barton was a rather large straggling village of the old- 

 fashioned, self-contained type, with a variety of small trades- 

 men and mechanics, many of whom lived in their own free- 

 hold or leasehold houses with fair-sized gardens. Our landlord 

 was a young man fairly educated and intelligent. One of 

 his brothers was a tailor, and made such good clothes that 

 my brother remarked upon the excellent cut and finish of a 

 suit worn by our host. Their eldest brother lived in a very 

 good old roomy cottage in the village, and was, I think, a 

 wheelwright, and I was sometimes asked to tea there, and 

 found them very nice people, and there was a rather elderly 

 unmarried sister who was very talkative and satirical. Most 



