94 
NATURE NOTES. 
L'eaving England with the Brookes in iSSo, she reached Borneo for the second 
time on the 25th of May, and after a delightful visit there, resulting in the dis- 
covery of Crimi/n A’orthiauum, she returned from Singapore with the writers of 
this notice to Brisbane, whence she made her way to Govett’s Leap (Govett, not 
Govall, was a surveyor) and down the zigzag railway to Sydney, where we had 
the great pleasure of introducing her to Dr. George Bennett, the veteran author 
of Gatherings of a Naturalist, and to Mrs. Bennett, who had recently received 
a valuable present from D’Albertis of birds of paradise in perfect glossy plumage. 
After seeing the district of Illawarra and Camden, she continued her journey 
from New South Wales through Victoria to Albany ; thence she was driven in the 
police cart to Perth. At Newcastle she painted the white-leafed Eucalyptus 
macrocarpus with its scarlet flowers. Leaving West .Australia in January with 
her three little flying mice (Acrobata pygmcsa), which lived for some months in 
the flat in Victoria Street, she sailed for Tasmania and New Zealand, and returned 
to England by way of the United States. A year was then spent in London in 
the completion of the Museum at Kew, which was opened to the public on the 
7th of June, 1S82. 
In August of the same year she went to South Africa, and after a pleasant 
sojourn there of some ten months, returned home to start again in a few w'eeks 
for the Seychelle Islands. This expedition was too great a strain for a person 
suffering from increasing deafness, but in spite of a nervous collapse, she planned 
and carried out the fatal one to Chili in 1884, when the effects of the hard life led 
in that country were only too apparent to all her friends upon her return to 
London. 
In 1886 she retired to peaceful Alderley, near Wootten-under-Edge, in 
Gloucestershire, full of projects for a garden which would remind her of delight- 
ful days in distant countries and the true friends who had contributed to her happy 
life, and was content to rest after labours which had culminated in the creation of 
one of the most attractive institutions in the country — “the North Gallerj' at 
Kew,” affording instruction to all classes not only on week days but on .Sunday 
afternoons, which Marianne North, surrounded in her quiet home by the most 
beautiful objects which the world could produce, felt were in England often given 
up to depraved and mischievous idleness, fostered by the compulsory closing of 
picture galleries and museums, with their wholesome and elevating influences. 
The crowds of simple folk as they gaze on the walls made beautiful at Kew, 
bless the “memory of the lady that did all the flowers herself,” and who passed 
nway from her many loving friends on August 30th, 1890. 
Having an admirable eye for colour and an infinite capacity for taking pains, 
she painted plants and animals as lovingly as if they were portraits of dear friends, 
and added a great charm to her pictures by introducing, as accessories, objects 
with which they were commonly associated in life. 
Being often greatly fatigued and ill, Miss North was apt to be silent and some- 
times a little brusque with bores and unsympathetic souls, but in her heart she 
liked to give pleasure, and to many ladies rich in talent but poor in purse she 
ever offered a warm and generous welcome. She had a keen sense of humour, 
loved children and young people (especially good-looking ones), and delighted in 
fun. In planning an expedition to her room at Kew, or some little dissipation in 
the way of one of her charming dinner parties in the Victoria flat, she always used 
to exclaim with a little laugh, “ Wonh it be fun, eh?” and when accomplished, 
“ Wasn’t it a success, eh ?” 
These Recollections of a Happy Life, lovingly edited by her sister, Mrs. J. A. 
.Symonds, should be in the hands of all young people, and of those who wish to 
travel in the countries therein described with leisure hours unwasted. The 
thoroughly suggestive impressions of tropical life might form the basis of pleasant 
lessons in geography and natural history, the illustrations being sought in life or 
pictorial presentment at Kew. The study of the fauna and flora of a country 
associated with various geological formations, altitudes, &c., would also in itself 
be a good exercise in that accurate observation, the absence of which is often the 
source of the general ignorance of science and art so frequently deplored by the 
authoress. 
It would be a great improvement in the next edition if the Kew catalogue 
formed an appendix, and a map with some sketches were added. Some slips 
