This wish to
know the names of wild plants, to be able to speak ... about them, had
arisen from a chance remark I had overheard about a year before. A lady
... whom we knew at Hertford, was talking to some friends in the street
when I and my father met them ... [and] I heard the lady say, 'We found
quite a rarity the other day--the Monotropa; it had not been found here
before.' This I pondered over, and wondered what the Monotropa was. All
my father could tell me was that it was a rare plant; and I thought how
nice it must be to know the names of rare plants when you found
them."[3]
One can picture the tall quiet boy going on these solitary rambles, his
eye becoming gradually quickened to perceive new forms in nature,
contrasting them one with another, and beginning to ponder over the
_cause_ which led to the diverse formation and colouring of leaves
apparently of the same family.
It was in 1841, four years later, that he heard of, and at once
procured, a book published at a shilling by the S.P.C.K. (the title of
which he could not recall in after years), to which he owed his first
scientific glimmerings of the vast study of botany.
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