388 



NATURE 



\AMgiist 30, 1877 



abundant gathering to many gleaners. One branch of the sub- 

 ject I have barely touched, the superstitious practices attaching 

 to many of our wild plants, though not surviving in their names. 

 I have left alone the interesting question of Bible plants, of the 

 hyssop, the juniper, the mustard-seed, the lilies of the field, the 

 burning bush, the shittah, the almug, the gopher, the curiously 

 mistranslated cab of dove's dung, with the light thrown upon 

 their identity by the names given to them in the commentaries 

 in our older translations. Nor can I do more than hint at the 

 rich store of literary allus'on to our wild flowers which abounds 

 in all English poets, and the beautiful thoughts suggested to 

 many of them by some particular plant. I should have liked to 

 read you Chaucer's lines upon the daisy, Herrick's on the daffo- 

 dil, IJurns's on the dog-rose, .Shelley's on the .sensitive plant, 

 Southey's on the holly, Wordsworth's on the lesser celandine, 

 Longfellow's on the conipas- plant. I should like to open 

 volume after volume of Elizabethan and of later days ; to 

 enumerate and discuss the flowers with which Ben Jonson 

 bids us "Strew, strew the smiling ground;" the "pretty 

 paunce and chevisaunce," of Spenser; the "quaint enamelled 

 eyes" that decked the laureate hearse of Lycidas ;" the silver 

 globes of guelder rose " which won the heart of Cowper ; the 

 "hawthorn bush beneath the shade" of Goldsmith's lovers; 

 the ''slight hairbell " which raised its head, uncrushed by the 

 airy tread of Ellen Douglas. I should like to remind you of 

 the lessons in natural theology which Paley drew from the 

 "little .spiral body" of the dodder seed; of the star-shaped 

 shadow of the daisy which Archer Butler showed to Words- 

 worth, or how Linnoeus, when he first saw the wild broom in 

 flower, 



" Knell before it on the sod. 

 For its beauty thanking God." 



Above all I should love to turn with you the page of Shake- 

 speare ; to read of the grey discrowned head of Lear wreathed 

 with "rank fumiters and furrow weeds;" of Perdita at the 

 shearing feast disparaging the streaked gilliflowers as Nature's 

 bastards ; of poor distraught Ophelia distributing her rosemary 

 and herb of grace ; of Puck telling how love in idleness was 

 purpled with love's wound ; of Titania gently entwining the 

 " female ivy and sweet honeysuckle" round the sleek smooth 

 ass's head of Bottom : of Helena and Hermia, "a double 

 cherry seeming parted, two lovely berries moulded on one stem." 

 For I should lay on you a spell mightier than I can forge myself; 

 I should invoke allies before whom we all bow as the source of 

 our intellectual happiness and growth ; I should remind you 

 how the most creative minds have drawn nutriment from these 

 tenants of our hedgerows and hill-sides, and how the knowledge 

 of their lore helps us in its turn to interpret the sweet thoughts 

 and apt illustrations of the poets they inspired and delighted : 

 how, if the aspirations of my Cambridge botanist weie fulfilled ; 

 if the daisy could become the bcUis^ the strawberry \^^ fragaria, 

 the honeysuckle the caprifoliinn, the heather the caltuna, the 

 parting genius of romance and myth and association and folk- 

 lore would be sent sighing from the domain of botany ; and the 

 richest and most attractive of the natural sciences would become 

 the dullest and the most neutral. 



In conclusion, let me disclaim all merit of originality in the 

 ideas which have been put before you to-night. I have but 

 attempted to bring together, with the interest attaching to 

 cumulative illustration, conjectures which have been started and 

 discoveries which have been worked out by others. Scattered 

 through the old-fashioned tomes of Coles, Lyte, Parkinson ; 

 through the pleasant pages of Loudon, Pratt, Johns ; above all 

 in that most valuable work on popular botany which we owe to 

 our Somersetshire naturalist. Dr. Prior, you will find all or 

 nearly all that I have advanced. The flowers were plucked by 

 other hands ; mine has been only the pia dexttra to sort and 

 wreathe them. 



NOTES 



We greatly regret to record the death of Mr. J. P. Gassiot, 

 D.C.L., F.R.S., which took place on the 15th inst., the opening 

 day of the Plymouth meeting of the British Association, at the 

 age of upwards of eighty years. Sir Wm. Thomson referred 

 to Mr. Gassiot at the concluding meeting of the Physical 

 Section in terms of the highest appreciation. His experiments 

 with the vacuum tubes, an account ot which will be found in the 



Royal Society's publications, extended over many years, and he 

 varied them in very many ways, in order to throw light on the 

 theory of the stratified discharge. Mr. Justice Grove worked a 

 great deal with Mr. Gassiot, who continuously for many years 

 experimented with a battery of high potential, beginning with a 

 battery of 500 water, and ending with 3,500 l.iclanclu- cells. 

 He spared no expense or trouble ni his own researches, and in 

 making known to Englishmen the researches of continental 

 physicists by the purchase of similar apparatus to that they had 

 employed. At his scientific gatherings one met the eminent 

 men of all nations, and in the early days of the British Associa- 

 tion they generally assembled after the meetings at Clapham 

 Common. Before his death he distributed the greater part of 

 his apparatus ; much of it was given to the Cowper Street 

 Middle Class School, and his vacuum tubes (in very great 

 numbers) to Mr. .Spottiswoode. He was a generous patron of 

 science, and a helper of scientific men. He has munificiently 

 endowed the Kew Observatory and the Cowper .Street Middle 

 Class School, and was the founder of the Royal .Society Scien- 

 tific Relief Fund. Plis untiring activity enabled him to take an 

 active part in the administration of some of the largest public 

 companies, and though in years he lived a very long life, by his 

 activiiy he m.iy be said to have lived twice as long. He was the 

 intimate friend of Faraday, and most men of eminence in 

 England and abroad ; those living will recall, when they hear of 

 his death, the many pleasant and profitable hours spent at 

 Clapham Common. 



We learn from a correspondent in Alexandria, under date 

 August 12, that the obelisk is now nearly quite inclosed in its 

 iron casing, and its launch may take place in another fortnight 

 or so. " It is now receiving an outer skin of strong thick planks, 

 to protect the casing from injury when it is rolled down the 

 inclined plane into the sea. Two delicate engineering opera- 

 tions have to be got over before it is ready for the launch. The 

 first is to let down the obelisk on to its bed in the cylinder, and, 

 that accomplished, to complete the riveting of the lower plates, 

 and then let the whole down on to the ground ; for at present 

 the obelisk and cylinders are supported above the ground inde- 

 pendent of one another. There will be no ceremony at the 

 launch as the state of the sea may prevent the operation at any 

 fixed time ; and a calm day will have to be selected. The Jiie 

 will take place when it is ready for sea after being docked in the 

 Great Harbour. It has yet to have a rudder and bilge keels 

 fitted, besides the cnbin, wooden deck, mast, sail, &c. It will 

 be painted bright-red and bear the name of " Cleopatra." If 

 met at sea, it may be taken for a torpedo boat, and avoided 

 accordingly. One side, the part which remained undermost, 

 is in beautiful preservation, but other sides are more or less 

 eroded ; (still, when erected and seen at a distance the 

 hieroglyphs will probably appear more sharply defined than 

 when seen close and in a prostrate position." 



Prof. E. S. Morse, of Salem, Mass., is now busy with 

 dredge and microscope in Japan, having fixed his headquarters 

 at Inoshima, seventeen miles south of Yokohama. Recently he 

 ascended one of the highest of the Japanese mountains, about 

 100 miles from the coast, and found opportunity there for 

 dredging Lake Chiusenji, a body of water 4,000 feet above sea 

 level. Its fauna was ascertained to be quite peculiar. Prof. Morse 

 will return to the United States in time for his usual courses 

 of lectures during the coming autumn and winter ; but after- 

 wards, in 1S78, he expects to go back to Japan, having accepted 

 an engagement in the Imperial University of Tokio, as professor 

 of biology. He has also projected a summer school of natural 

 history, to be conducted on the coast near the university ; his 

 text-book for beginners in zoology is to be trinslated into the 

 language of japan, and animals native to that country are to be 



