364 THE RETURN FROM INDIA 
and out I feel the great climacteric passed, and look back 
upon life after the fashion that people are described as doing 
after marriage, or the birth of their first child at latest, but as I 
do not after either of these occasions. I am greatly pleased 
for my wife's sake too, who took infinite pains Tvith it, and 
but for whom it would have been a very differently rated 
book I fear. 
Nevertheless, working out results in so many other directions 
proved a heavy distraction from his prime task in Botany, 
and he exclaims to Bentham : 
Catch me at Quizzical Geography, Geology, and Meteorology 
again if you can ; they have afforded me much amusement 
and instruction and wonderful pleasure ; for I have always 
felt a keen pleasure in practical philosophy, tools and tables 
of logarithms, and now that I have said my say and added 
my quota to the heap, I think the wisest thing I can do is 
to leave it for work that is more expected of me.^ 
The one fly in the ointment was the extreme parsimony 
of the East India Company : 
I have had a fight with them [he tells Bentham in August 
1855] about discount upon the Himalayan book ; which 
would have left me out of pocket £30 by the copies they did 
me the honour of subscribing for, and I pitched them a letter 
that they could not say no to, telhng them that they did not 
behave so in another case to which they were subscribing 
(Gould), and they were the only subscribers I had, public 
or private, who asked for 15 per cent, discount on their 
subscription. So much for my growls. 
A variety of other occupations helped to fill up these years. 
Preparations for the Great Exhibition of 1851 were well afoot 
by the time of his return to England. His services were 
immediately secured as a Juror in the Botanical section and 
^ For this practical tui-n compare his description (to Berkeley the micro - 
scopist, 1854) of the Microscopical Society Soiree, ' wlicre nothing short of a 
double-barrelled, revolving, etc., etc., instrument is thought worth notice. 
I saw some astonishingly pretty things, but the whole view is too kaleidoscopic 
for me. I never feel satisfied as to what I see if I have not poked at it pre- 
viously with my own fingers.' 
