132 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE 
Falklands : November 25, 1842. 
The books you send out are capital. Lindley's 
Elements seems a most valuable work to me and the 
very one I wanted, for I have a very high opinion of him 
as a Nat. Order man— though he makes too many it 
is impossible not to admire the thorough knowledge he 
has of the subject ; and now that a linear arrangement 
will never do, and Fries's Motto ' omnis ord. nat. circulum 
per se clausum exhibet ' is daily gaining proof, Lindley's 
groups and alhances of plants which, hke sects, are more 
like one another than anything else, must be invaluable. 
I am no judge of the goodness of this arrangement of the 
groups, but it is the throwing the Nat. Orders into groups 
and showing the dependence of one group on another which 
impresses me ; his theory of the mosses is an eyesore to me 
and shows the folly of theory without practice. . . . 
As to his occupations on the treeless, wind-swept island, 
he tells his father (May 3, 1842) : 
On this Island my time has been entirely devoted to 
Botany. . . . Every day adds something new to my col- 
lection, especially among the lower tribes. During my 
late excursion, I found the Ballia Brunonii, which I have 
now gathered all round the world. . . . Altogether this 
place is better for Botany than I expected, and but for 
Lichens, &c., it beats Kerguelen's Land, [though] collect- 
ing here is no sinecure, for the days are very short and the 
nights long. 
Later he tells his mother (xlugust 28, 1842) : 
The weather and state of the country, now swamped, 
prevents my making any excursions to a distance, though 
I enjoy the short walks about the bay very much and seldom 
go out without picking up some novelty. At present my 
time ashore is wholly taken up with seaweeds and marine 
animals, for which pm-pose I wander along the beach at 
low water with long boots on, collecting ; but the wind is 
so cutting and the water so cold, that I often wonder whether 
my hands spend most of the time in the water or my pockets, 
whither they are wont to stray, as in days of yore. 
