196 



MY LIFE 



,[Chap. 



grouped into natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great 

 when I was now able to identify the charming little eyebright, 

 the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome 

 mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all 

 of them as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one 

 great natural order, and that under all their superficial 

 diversity of form there was a similarity of structure which, 

 when once clearly understood, enabled me to locate each 

 fresh species with greater ease. The Crucifers, the Pea tribe, 

 the Umbelliferae, the Compositse,and the Labiates offered great 

 difficulties, and it was only after repeated efforts that I was 

 able to name with certainty a few of the species, after which 

 each additional discovery became a little less difficult, though 

 the time I gave to the study before I left England was not 

 sufficient for me to acquaint myself with more than a moderate 

 proportion of the names of the species I collected. 



Now, I have some reason to believe that this was the 

 turning-point of my life, the tide that carried me on, not to 

 fortune but to whatever reputation I have acquired, and 

 which has certainly been to me a never-failing source of 

 much health of body and supreme mental enjoyment. If my 

 brother had had constant work for me so that I never had an 

 idle day, and if I had continued to be similarly employed 

 after I became of age, I should most probably have become 

 entirely absorbed in my profession, which, in its various de- 

 partments, I always found extremely interesting, and should 

 therefore not have felt the need of any other occupation or 

 study. 



I know now, though I was ignorant of it at the time, that 

 my brother's life was a very anxious one, that the difficulty 

 of finding remunerative work was very great, and that he 

 was often hard pressed to earn enough to keep us both in the 

 very humble way in which we lived. He never alluded to 

 this that I can remember, nor did I ever hear how much our 

 board and lodging cost him, nor ever saw him make the 

 weekly or monthly payments. During the seven years I was 

 with him I hardly ever had more than a few shillings for 



