152 REMINISCENCES. 



different subjects. He had other sets of abstracts arranged, 

 not according to subject, but according to periodical. When 

 collecting facts on a large scale, in earlier years, he used to 

 read through, and make abstracts, in this way, of whole series 

 of periodicals. 



In some of his early letters he speaks of filling several 

 note-books with facts for his book on species ; but it was 

 certainly early that he adopted his plan of using portfolios, 

 as described in the ' Recollections.' * My father and M. de 

 Candolle were mutually pleased to discover that they had 

 adopted the same plan of classifying facts. De Candolle 

 describes the method in his ' Phytologie,' and in his sketch 

 of my father mentions the satisfaction he felt in seeing it in 

 action at Down. 



Besides these portfolios, of which there are some dozens 

 full of notes, there are large bundles of MS. marked " used " 

 and put away. He felt the value of his notes, and had a 

 horror of their destruction by fire. I remember, when some 

 alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be especially 

 careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest of his life would 

 be miserable if his notes and books were to be destroyed. 



He shows the same feeling in writing about the loss of a 

 manuscript, the purport of his words being, " I have a copy, 

 or the less would have killed me." In writing a book he 

 would spend much time and labour in making a skeleton or 

 plan of the whole, and in enlarging and sub-classing each 

 heading, as described in his ' Recollections.' I think this 

 careful arrangement of the plan was not at all essential to the 

 building up of his argument, but for its presentment, and for 

 the arrangement of his facts. In his 'Life of Erasmus 

 Darwin,' as it was first printed in slips, the growth of the 

 book from a skeleton was plainly visible. The arrangement 



* The racks in which the port- chapter, in the recess at the right- 

 folios were placed are shown in the hand side of the fire-place, 

 illustration at the head of the 



