Ixiv 



begun but never finished, and as heavy a load of ideas for promising 

 investigations never so much as even touched, though his love of 

 science and belief in its might never wavered, though he never 

 doubted the value of the results which further research would surely 

 bring him, there was something working in him which made his hand, 

 when turned to anatomical science, so heavy that he could not lift it. 

 Not even that which was so strong within him, the duty of fulfilling 

 a promise, could bring him to the work. In his room at South 

 Kensington, where for a quarter of a century he had laboured with 

 such brilliant effect, there lay on his working table for months, 

 indeed for years, partly dissected specimens of the rare and little- 

 studied marine animal, Spirula, of which he had promised to con- 

 tribute an account to the Reports of the "Challenger" Expedition, 

 and hard by lay the already engraven plates ; there was still wanted 

 nothing more than some further investigation and the working out of 

 the results. But it seemed as if some hidden hands were always 

 being stretched out to keep him from the task; and eventually 

 another labourer had to complete it. 



Not that the intellectual power was wanting, bnt that the mind 

 could not work freely in the old fields and on the old lines. A new 

 subject he took up with avidity. Attracted in his walks round 

 Maloja in the Engadine, whither he had been sent for his health, by the 

 various species of gentian, he threw himself with ardour into the 

 study of that genus, and published in the 1 Proceedings of the Linnean 

 Society ' a memoir dealing with the morphology of the gentian, and 

 proposing a classification based on characters of distinct morpholo- 

 gical value. As the work of one who, as he himself has said, had little or 

 nothing of the naturalist in him, and recked little of species, and who, 

 moreover, never had the opportunity of gaining that almost instinc- 

 tive appreciation of the value of botanical characters which comes to 

 those whose lives are spent among flowers, the memoir is in many 

 respects a remarkable one. 



But the new topics in which his mind now moved with the 

 greatest freedom, were those of philosophy and, through philosophy, 

 those of theology. Not that they were really new, for his mind had 

 exercised itself in them from his youth upward, bat it was a new 

 thing to him to be able to give his undivided attention to them. 

 And nearly the whole of his time in his retreat at Eastbourne, save 

 that which was given to public demands, such as those of the British 

 Museum, of the University of London, to the senate of which he 

 had for some years belonged, and of the Marine Biological Association, 

 which had been founded chiefly through his powerful influence, and 

 maintained largely through his constant cordial support, was devoted 

 to the study of philosophy and theology, indeed chiefly the latter, the 

 results of his meditations being from time to time laid before the 



