GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
were abandoned in 1834, He died at ninety-four, leaving behind 
him the reputation of a distinguished botanist, enthusiastically 
attached to the doctrine of Linneus. 
Many are the stories told of his childlike simplicity of character 
and his benevolence, and also of his oddities. In early life he had 
enrolled himself in the volunteer military forces—which on a 
certain occasion when rioting was anticipated, were called out 
in readiness to quell the disturbance, should it take place. ‘‘ If 
I had been ordered to fire upon the people,” he said, “‘ I should 
certainly have done so, offering up at the same time a prayer that 
my bullet might not take effect.” 
On one of the Herborizings on the banks of the Thames, he 
witnessed a boat accident, when a number of boys were capsized. 
Though assured by everybody that the entire party was saved, 
he was not satisfied, for he saw the boat floating bottom upper- 
most, and he shouted, ‘‘ Turn up the boat for heaven’s sake!” 
This was done and a lad of fourteen was discovered insensible 
under the thwarts. 
Wheeler carried indifference to appearance, and simplicity in 
dress, to extremes: but there was no affectation in this, and he 
seems to have been quite unconscious of the eccentricity of his 
‘appearance, although on one occasion a friend remarked to him: 
“Ah, Diogenes! thy pride peeps out of every button of: thy 
coat !” 
The surgery at St. Thomas’s Hospital went by the name of 
“the Shop.” On a certain occasion the old professor was sitting 
in this room with a number of students, who were joking and 
bantering him, and each other, and he, on his part, was impressing 
upon them the folly of superfiuities in dress. A youth, who later 
on rose to eminence in his profession, said with assumed gravity : 
“Well, but, Mr. Wheeler, how can you support such a doctrine 
when you yourself wear such a superfluity as this ?”’ and he lifted 
up the small pig-tail which the professor wore. The old man, 
‘* taken aback,” confessed that it was ‘‘ superfluous.” ‘* Yes, my 
dear sir, you are right, we are too prone to preach one thing, and 
practise another ; cut it off, sir, pray cut it off!” and Laurence— 
‘for such was his name,” forthwith performed the amputation. 
On another occasion Wheeler was driving in an open carriage with 
James Lowe Wheeler, and Hurlock, a well-known member of the 
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