"Botanical Rambles," in four parts according to the seasons, which 

 was not completed until 1852 ; and about the same time he made 

 his most important botanical discovery, viz. the wealth of rarities on 

 the promontory of the Lizard. In his "Notes on British Plants," 

 contributed to Hooker's "London Journal of Botany "in 1847, 

 Johns was the first to record Trifolium stridum as a British plant, 

 and was also the first to add T. procumbens, 21 filifornie and 

 Thalictrutn minus to the list for Cornwall. His only geological 

 publication was a note " On the Landslip at the Lizard " in the 

 " Journal of the Geological Society " for 1848 ; and in that year he 

 published one of his most successful little books, "A Week at the 

 Lizard," which has been recently described by a writer of great 

 local knowledge as "still our only reliable guide to that romantic 

 corner of Cornwall." 



Although Johns availed himself, of course, of the researches 

 and records of his predecessors, he was an assiduous collector 

 during most of his life, not only in Cornwall, but also in the 

 mountains of both the north and the south of Ireland, when he 

 was an undergraduate in Dublin, and in other districts in his 

 later years. 



A former pupil, Mr. W. F. Collier, writing in the "Cornish 

 Magazine" (vol. ii, pp. n 7-8), says — 



" My recollection as a schoolboy of Charles Alexander Johns is, that he was 

 not a good teacher, and did not make his lessons interesting, as Dervvent 

 Coleridge did. He heard lessons sharply enough, but was often all the time 

 setting up specimens of botany, no doubt for publication, as I thought them 

 beautifully done. I well remember now some pretty specimens of mosses in 

 flower, set up whilst I was hammering over Virgil. He sat all school-time 

 with us, in his own desk, whilst Derwent Coleridge was in his den . . . whence 

 he issued at times to lecture the boys or to administer punishment. C. A. Johns 

 proved himself afterwards to be a good teacher, and had a preparatory school 

 of his own near Winchester, of such good repute that it was difficult, and took 

 some time, to get a boy into it. My schoolboy impression of his teaching 

 power must therefore be held to be not justified. He used to take some of 

 the older boys out with him to study botany on holidays and half-holidays, and 

 we looked on the tin cases for holding specimens, which they hung round 

 their shoulders, as a priggish sort of affair, not to be compared for a moment 

 with the manly fishing-basket." 



Johns left Helston at the end of 1847, and took a house in 

 Walpole Street, Chelsea ; but in the following summer he became 

 incumbent of Beenham, near Newbury, where he was living at the 

 time of the first publication of " Flowers of the Field." In 1856 he 

 established a private school at Callipers Hall, near Rickmansworth, 

 remaining there till 1863. 



"First Steps to Botany," published in 1853, was introductory to 

 " Flowers of the Field," which first appeared in the same year, 



