SECOND RESIDENCE AT CAPE TOWN. 83 



shells, on the table of the microscope. Query. How are 

 minute lenses held whilst polishing, and with what are they 

 polished ? I fear with diamond powder, which, unless it could 

 be fixed on something like a minute file, would hardly do for 

 abrading the hard coats prior to dissection. How do other 

 botanists manage ? Pray ask Brown, Lindley, or some of the 

 great guns. Also ask Ross if he could make a compound dis- 

 secting microscope, which would not reverse the image, and which 

 would allow an inch, or one and a half inch focus, with a con- 

 siderable power. I don't know if the non-reversing system is 

 possible ; perhaps by having large lenses it might be done. 

 I want a power as great at least as the second power of Jones's 

 simple microscope, which he called " Hooker's Improved," &c. 

 For this I would willingly give ten or twelve pounds, if it could 

 be managed for this sum. There should be a large dissecting 

 plate. I cannot manage to dissect under a reversing micro- 

 scope. 



Cape Town, January 25, 1837. 

 I don't know if there is any vessel for England : there is 

 a ball up, and that may prove one. I grew heartily tired of my 

 lodging at " Protea," and have moved back to town. Here at 

 Mrs. V.'s I am completely at my ease, and as happy as I can be 

 in Africa. I hope in six or eight months more to have a little 

 place of my own. Country air is pleasanter food than medicine. 

 My bedroom here serves for study, herbarium, and shell room, 

 and you know a naturalist in preparing his goods breeds odours 

 little to be desired in a sleeping apartment. 



A herbarium or dirt pie gives no idea of the richness of 

 our flora. One has but a few pieces of a beautiful plant, 

 which in a state of nature actually affects the landscape as far 

 as the eye can distinguish small objects. In many places for 

 instance, the country looks quite blue with Lapeyrousia, or pink 

 with Watsonia, or glowing in all the variety of Ixias. Our 

 fields bespangled thus with showy plants are covered also with 

 innumerable blossoming tribes, to be seen only when looked 

 for, hiding their little heads under their pompous neighbours. 

 If any seeds of Aristea pusilla have come up, nurse them 

 carefully, for though a common thing, even to the present day 

 it gladdens my heart as I drive along the road. Its profuse 



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