BOOKS AND EEADING 131 
From the botanist's point of view, the Falklands turned 
out better than was expected. The mosses took first place 
for interest ; then the monocotyledons, of which he had about 
forty species, and he found a good many plants undescribed 
in De CandoUe after the publication of D'Urville's lists. 
He was grateful for having the run of the Governor's 
library. 
I often spend a day there and afterwards take on 
board with me any of his books that please me. Those 
I have been lately reading are — Pope's Homer's Ihad, 
Mrs. Hemans' Poems, Daniell's Chemical Philosophy and 
Pugin's Christian Architecture, a very miscellaneous selec- 
tion, but even from the last; with all his faults and 
bigoted Eoman Cathohcism, I have gained much good. 
Keith's Evidence (of Prophecy) and Pollock's Course of 
Time I had read long before without appreciating them 
as I do now, — Stephens's Travels in the East pleased me 
much and Milner's Church History, what I have seen of 
it, for it is too much for me to get through here. (To Lady 
Hooker, August 24, 1842.) 
As regards botanical books, however, he tells his father 
(August 25, 1842) : 
It was very foolish in me to have brought so few books 
on Cryptogamic plants, having nothing but Loudon's ^ 
Encyclopaedia and the miserable Sprengel ^ to help me. 
From knowing something of the mosses before, I can get on 
with them and examine them very minutely, but with the 
Algae and Lichens I am sadly puzzled. Your parcel to 
me, when it comes ! will be a great catch, if it is only for 
the Journal, to which Berkeley no doubt still contributes. 
It was better when a packet arrived from Sir William : 
1 John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) was a famous traveller, landscape 
gardener, agriculturist, and horticultural writer ; Fellow of the Linnean 
Society, 1806. His energy, despite ill health, is illustrated by the fact that 
at one time he was editing five monthly periodicals, from the Gardeners^ 
Magazine to the Arboretum et Fruticetum Briiannicum. 
2 Kurt Sprengel (1766-1833) was Professor of Medicine and later of Botany 
at Halle. His investigations greatly stimulated the mici'oscopio anatomy of 
plants, though his own results, owing to inadequate means of investigation, 
were not always trustworthy. 
