2 A GARDEN DIARY 
an ambition had I, in early days, set before myself. 
To be a traveller on the great scale; a visitor 
of remote solitudes, and practically untrodden 
shores; a discoverer of undescribed forms; a 
rifler of Nature’s still unrifled treasure-houses— 
such was the hope, and such the happy dream. 
The words “Unknown to science” floated in 
those days before my youthful fancy, and were 
to it a shibboleth, as other and more obviously 
stimulating words have been to other youthful 
brains. Fate has not willed that any such re- 
sounding lot should be mine, nor was it, to tell 
the truth, particularly likely that it should so will 
it. To few of our race has it been given to add, 
by even a little, to the knowledge of that race, 
and I am not aware that any portion of my own 
equipment had particularly marked me out for 
this réle that I had so confidently assigned to 
myself. 
Luckily we learn to grow down gracefully, as 
the sedums and the pennyworts do. A lot that 
at ten years old seems unendurably pitiful in its 
narrowness, at five times that mature age comes 
to be regarded as quite a becoming lot, leaving 
room for plenty of easy self-respect, and even for 
a spurt or two of the purest and most invigorat- 
ing vanity. As that down-growing process ad- 
vances we assure ourselves, more and more 
confidently, that all the really important, the 
vital part of such explorations belongs to us, at 
