THE REV. J. G. WOOD. 
69 
when narrating “ fairy tales of science,” unless, it may be, when 
•constructing the theories based upon their fascinating romances. 
There are many more biologists than there used to be ; hut, as 
it seems to us, there are fewer naturalists. “ Biology” has taken 
the place of “ Natural History,” as we used to understand the 
term ; and there are many who know the minute structure of a 
plant who would not recognise the plant itself were it placed 
before them. “ What is that beautiful thing ?” said a young 
lady to a venerable professor, pointing to a brilliant scarlet 
fungus on his table. “ That is a Peziza,” was the reply. “ Oh ! 
a Peziza ! Why, I have been working at Peziza for the last three 
weeks,” answered his fair questioner. There be many scientists, 
but few naturalists, and there is none among them to take the 
place of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who was taken from us on the 
30th of January, 1889, a sketch of whose life, from the pen of 
his son, is now before us. 
John George Wood was born in London on the 21st of July, 
1827. He was weak and sickly from his birth, and, from an 
early age, manifested that fondness of books which is often 
evinced by children who are debarred from more violent sports, 
and which lasted throughout his life. 
He was not a sharp boy at figures. Whether, like the Beaver 
in the “ Hunting of the Snark,” he — • 
“ Lamented with tears how in earlier years 
He had taken no pains with his sums,” 
we cannot say ; but his arithmetical knowledge was always rudi- 
mentary, although his biographer distinctly tells us that “ he did 
know that two and two make four,” while the Beaver, it will 
1 be remembered — 
“ Fairly lost heart and outgrabe in despair ” 
when endeavouring unsuccessfully to add two to one. His early 
boyhood was marked by a fondness for pets, which is not 
uncommon, but was accompanied in his case by a constant 
“ poking, and probing, and prying here, there, and everywhere, in 
the endeavour to discover some of the manifold secrets of 
Nature, and to learn the ways and doings of the multitudinous 
living creatures that garden and river and woodland afforded.” 
He was, in fact, even as a boy, a follower of that model 
naturalist, Sir Thomas Ingoldsby, who— 
“ Would pore by the hour 
O’er a weed or a flower, 
Or the slugs that come crawling out after a shower ; 
Black-beetles and bumble-bees, blue-bottle flies 
And moths, were of no small account in his eyes ; 
An industrious flea he’d by no means despise, 
While an old daddy-long-legs, whose long legs and thighs 
Passed the common in shape, or in colour, or size, 
He was wont to consider an absolute prize.” 
— except, however, that Mr. Wood never seems to have taken 
