46 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



I may say that in one specimen he has detected a byssoid 

 fungus, which had grown on decayed wood, and had been 

 petrified along with the wood it grew upon. Thus one of the 

 most fugacious of plants has been preserved in statu quo for 

 thousands of years. He showed me the Bafflesia, 1 and told 

 me he was about to publish a paper upon it. All his papers 

 are considered botanical gems. Then he talked of the Cape. 

 I told him of my thoughts of settling there for some years, 

 and of writing a flora of the colony. He said, some of the 

 pleasantest botanizing he ever had was on Devil's Mountain, 

 near Cape Town, and he thought I could not pitch on a more 

 delightful field of study. Though the ground be trodden there, 

 there is much to explore and to revise. I may reckon, he 

 thinks, on fully five thousand species. Pleasant work ! 



To the Same. 



Ilauover Street, Hanover Square, 



December 8th, 1834. 

 Here I am, sitting by myself, nearly eleven o'clock at night, 

 and up two pair of stairs, in a snug little parlour, with a cheerful 

 blazing fire, and a pair of wax candles — my candles and land- 

 lady (on canvas, luckily) looking down most smilingly on my 

 labours — myself sitting, I should say, in a half-lolling posture, 

 in a fine, soft easy chair, my feet resting on a soft, curiously- 

 emblazoned rug, and enclosed in a pair of new Morocco slippers. 

 Altogether a picture for a painter to study. Well, I can live 

 very well at the Cape, I guess. Who cares for society ? Oh, 

 wait till I feel the want, you will say. Well, wait, say I. 



I have been at a fire to-night — a fine scene. Not the Thames, 

 however, though somewhat near it. I was going to take tea 

 and to sleep at William Christy's, 2 in the country. He has a 

 warehouse in Gracechurch Street. I went there to meet him ; 

 but just as I reached it I saw flames and smoke, with showers of 

 sparks. His warehouse escaped, his neighbour's was burned — 

 and a famous flame it made. The remarks of the bystanders, 

 taken down, would be amusing. Pity, fright, and grief, rapidly 



1 Iiafflesia Arnoldi, an extraordinary East Indian plant, discovered by 

 Dr. Arnold ; fungus-like and of huge size. See " Life of Sir Stamford Raffles." 



2 This gentleman — an amateur botanist, and brother to Henry Christy — 

 was a well-known archaeologist. 



