THE LATE REV. W. W, NEWBOULD. 
161 
incarnation of self-abnegation, nothing was to him a source 
of greater happiness than to place his time, his brains, his 
critical experience freely at the disposal of some younger man 
who seemed in need of them. This he did ungrudgingly. 
He asked no return. Notoriety he sought not. To see his 
name in print brought to him not the smallest quickening of 
the pulse, unless, indeed, from a feeling of abashed humility. 
And yet, for all this, few men have done so much work, 
patient hard work, in connection with local floras, as he has. 
It was my lot in the years 1875, ’76, and ’77, and to a lesser 
degree in the two following years, to devote my whole spare 
time to the compilation of materials for a reissue of the Flora 
of Bedfordshire. It was in this connection that I, as so many 
others have done, first became acquainted with Mr. Newbould. 
This was in June, 1876. I had sent to him a copy of my 
“ Plant List for 1875” (Trans. Beds. Nat. Hist. Soc., Vol. I., 
p. 65), and received in acknowledgment a letter full of kindly 
sympathy and encouragement—a letter such as, in my expe¬ 
rience of critical botanists, only he and the late Hewitt 
Cottrell Watson could write. It so happened, however, that 
just then another tie between us had arisen in a way which 
to me was a grateful surprise. I was at the time just begin¬ 
ning life, botanically speaking, in another sense, in that I had 
just commenced a course of lectures on Elementary Botany 
to a class of about 100 boys from the lower forms of the 
Grammar School at Bedford—boys varying between nine 
and eleven years of age. Amongst these were two of Mr. 
Newbould’s own boys, who were being educated at that 
School. No one could feel so much as I could myself how 
desperately hard this task was to a beginner. Years have 
only accentuated the feeling of failure which I had at the 
time. How grateful to a young beginner, full of a love for 
his subject, but fuller still of a sense of inability to teach it 
properly, to be told at this beginning of the work, “ I was 
very glad to learn a few weeks ago that one of my boys had 
come under your tuition. If you can but teach him any one 
thing well and accurately I should not much mind what ho 
does not learn. All the rest will be only a mere question of 
time” (June 17, 1876); and again a few months later (Aug. 7, 
1876), “ You have contrived to get a monstrous quantity of 
botany into my lads, and they have much improved in other 
ways. Many thanks to you for this.” Only those who know 
and have felt the sickening sense of failure can realise what 
precious balm this was to me, and how it spurred me on to 
try and do indeed what the kindly heart of Mr. Newbould had 
prompted him to attribute to me. 
