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. The next step was to
procure, at much self-sacrifice, Lindley's "Elements of Botany,"
published at half a guinea, which to his immense disappointment he found
of very little use, as it did not deal with British plants! His
disappointment was lessened, however, by the loan from a Mr. Hayward of
London's "Encyclopedia of Plants," and it was with the help of these two
books that he made his first classification of the specimens which he
had collected and carefully kept during the few preceding years.

"It must be remembered," he says in "My Life," "that my ignorance of
plants at this time was extreme. I knew the wild rose, bramble,
hawthorn, buttercup, poppy, daisy and foxglove, and a very few others