OVERWORK 537 
earnestly hope that you will follow my example here and 
demand the Sunday for yourself and those only of your own 
friends you choose to ask personally. 
And a month later : 
I can only repeat, for God's sake do not overtask your- 
self, proceed methodically and kick out the Society or the 
Bot. Gardens ; cultivate moral courage as the first of all 
qualities in a man of business. 
June 2 : I shall transgress my rule of writing only once 
a month to give you a stave. . . . 
' Servate animam aequam/ my dear fellow, and do not 
allow your frightful accumulation of work in hand to over- 
whelm you as it well may. Just now I can well appreciate 
your position and labour, for here have I been [at Hitcham] 
for 10 days emptying poor Henslow's house — such an 
accumulation. Tons have gone to Cambridge and Kew, 
and there are 150 boxes to go to Stevens' auction room. 
You are right to give a few hours a day to each job till 
each is cleared off ; if you can carry this through all will 
go well with you — and if you do not iant fis for you — but 
do I beg of you servate animam aequam. Do not be bothered 
— go steadily to work. Do not fret about the plants arriving 
dead at Calcutta. You had a better experience of our luck 
during your stay at Kew than is usual with us. 
To his staunch helper, Professor Oliver, he also writes an 
emphatic warning against his overwork, and for himself, on 
bidding Bentham to Kew on September 3, 1861, he adds : ' We 
can talk over Genera and gamble in the evening, for I have 
reformed my habits of working at night, now that I have 
not to write so much as heretofore.' Though he managed to 
keep off the R. S. Council with its heavy work in 1862, he was 
compelled, much against his will, to accept a botanical Juror- 
ship at the Exhibition of 1862 ; but despite the loss of income 
and regret at surrendering an outpost of Science, he was glad 
to give up the examinership at London University in 1864. 
Though he tried to resign his other examinerships at the same 
time, he was compelled to continue the work until he succeeded 
to the Directorship of Kew in 1865. 
