144 REMINISCENCES. 



The quiet life he led at Down made him feel confused in a 

 large society ; for instance, at the Royal Society's soirtes he 

 felt oppressed by the numbers. The feeling that he ought to 

 know people, and the difficulty he had in remembering faces 

 in his latter years, also added to his discomfort on such 

 occasions. He did not realise that he would be recognised 

 from his photographs, and I remember his being uneasy at 

 being obviously recognised by a stranger at the Crystal Palace 

 Aquarium. 



I must say something of his manner of working: one 

 characteristic of it was his respect for time ; he never forgot 

 how precious it was. This was shown, for instance, in the 

 way in which he tried to curtail his holidays ; also, and more 

 clearly, with respect to shorter periods. He would often say, 

 that saving the minutes was the way to get work done ; he 

 showed this love of saving the minutes in the difference he felt 

 between a quarter of an hour and ten minutes' work ; he never 

 wasted a few spare minutes from thinking that it was not 

 worth while to set to work. I was often struck by his way 

 of working up to the very limit of his strength, so that he 

 suddenly stopped in dictating, with the words, " I believe I 

 mustn't do any more." The same eager desire not to lose 

 time was seen in his quick movements when at work. I 

 particularly remember noticing this when he was making an 

 experiment on the roots of beans, which required some care 

 in manipulation ; fastening the little bits of card upon the 

 roots was done carefully and necessarily slowly, but the in- 

 termediate movements were all quick ; taking a fresh bean, 

 seeing that the root was healthy, impaling it on a pin, fixing 

 it on a cork, and seeing that it was vertical, &c. ; all these 

 processes were performed with a kind of restrained eagerness. 

 He always gave one the impression of working with pleasure, 

 and not with any drag. I have an image, too, of him as he 

 recorded the result of some experiment, looking eagerly at 

 each root, &c., and then writing with equal eagerness. I 



