BOTANY AT SEA 71 
Botanical work on board ship was done under difficulties 
of its own, especially at the outset. As has been seen, the 
early collections found small favour in the sight of his scientific 
friends at home, who, as his father said, looked to the actual 
results apart from inexperience and the extenuating circum- 
stances of drought ashore and wet on board, when in the tropics 
the specimens pressed in the ordinary blotting-paper fermented, 
and the presence of the passengers for the Cape left no room 
for dealing properly with the plants. When they left, the 
sick bay was available for the naturaHsts, 
and a great comfort it is [he writes on March 28, 1840], as 
it is spacious, and hitherto I have been very much at a loss 
where to lay out my plants, not liking to take advantage 
of the Captain's cabin for so extensive a job, and our berth 
being too full during the day to grant me room enough. 
Hitherto I have always laid them out and changed them 
after my messmates have turned in, which often kept me 
up very late after my excursions ; further, until the Captain 
had reduced his cabin into order I had no place to put my 
collections, and they used to get sadly kicked about the 
lower deck ; now, however, I have a nice cabinet in the cabin, 
where there is nothing to fear but the universal dampness 
of the ship, and a few cockroaches which did me some little 
damage, eating out the stems of some plants, and leaving 
the leaves. 
He accepted his father's criticisms as a stimulus to better 
work. The conditions being what they were, this criticism 
was perhaps rather uncompromising, considering that when he 
sent his collections of some 200 species home from St. Helena 
(February 3, 1840) he did not himself think he had much to 
show for his labour : 
Some are good specimens, others are only sent as 
mementoes. I can hardly expect you to be much pleased 
with them, though I assure you I never spent an idle day 
ashore ; nevertheless I never came off at night, without 
being convinced that I might have done much more than 
was done. Capt. Boss wished me to delay sending them 
till we arrive at the Cape, ... I do not care that my 
