"[2]
At the same time Wallace became attracted by, and interested in, the
flowers, shrubs and trees growing in that part of Bedfordshire, and he
acquired some elementary knowledge of zoology. "It was," he writes,
"while living at Barton that I obtained my first information that there
was such a science as geology.... My brother, like most land-surveyors,
was something of a geologist, and he showed me the fossil oysters of the
genus Gryphaea and the Belemnites ... and several other fossils which
were abundant in the chalk and gravel around Barton.... It was here,
too, that during my solitary rambles I first began to feel the influence
of nature and to wish to know more of the various flowers, shrubs and
trees I daily met with, but of which for the most part I did not even
know the English names. At that time I hardly realised that there was
such a science as systematic botany, that every flower and every meanest
and most insignificant weed had been accurately described and
classified, and that there was any kind of system or order in the
endless variety of plants and animals which I knew existed.
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