no MY LIFE 



was such a science as systematic botany, that every flower 

 and every meanest and most insignificant weed had been 

 accurately described and classified, and that there was any 

 kind of system or order in the endless variety of plants and 

 animals which I knew existed. This wish to know the names 

 of wild plants, to be able even to speak of them, and to learn 

 anything that was known about them, had arisen from a 

 chance remark I had overhead about a year before. A lady, 

 who was governess in a Quaker family we knew at Hertford, 

 was talking to some friends in the street when I and my 

 father met them, and stayed a few minutes to greet them. I 

 then heard the lady say, " We found quite a rarity the other 

 day — the Monotropa; it had not been found here before." 

 This I pondered over, and wondered what the Monotropa was. 

 All my father could tell me was that it was a rare plant; and 

 I thought how nice it must be to know the names of rare 

 plants when you found them. However, as I did not even 

 know there were books that described every British plant, 

 and as my brother appeared to take no interest in native plants 

 or animals, except as fossils, nothing came of this desire for 

 knowledge till a few years later. 



Barton was a rather large straggling village of the old- 

 fashioned, self-contained type, with a variety of small trades- 

 men and mechanics, many of whom lived in their own free- 

 hold or leasehold houses with fair-sized gardens. Our landlord 

 was a young man fairly educated and intelligent. One of his 

 brothers was a tailor, and made such good clothes that my 

 brother remarked upon the excellent cut and finish of a suit 

 worn by our host. Their eldest brother lived in a very good 

 old roomy cottage in the village, and was, I think, a wheel- 

 wright, and I was sometimes asked to tea there, and found 

 them very nice people, and there was a rather elderly unmar- 

 ried sister who was very talkative and satirical. Most of the 

 villagers, and some of the farmers around, used to come to 

 the house we lived in, and among them was a painter and 

 glazier, who was married while I was there, and who was sub- 

 jected to good-humoured banter when he came to the house 



