equally common.... I knew nothing whatever as to genera and species, nor
of the large number of distinct forms related to each and grouped into
natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to
identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat
and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax,
and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed
parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial
diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly
understood, enabled me to locate each fresh species with greater ease."
This, however, was not sufficient, and the last step was to form a
herbarium.

"I soon found," he wrote, "that by merely identifying the plants I found
in my walks I lost much time in gathering the same species several
times, and even then not being always quite sure that I had found the
same plant before. I therefore began to form a herbarium, collecting
good specimens and drying them carefully between drying papers and a
couple of boards weighted with books or stones.... I first named the
species as nearly as I could do so, and then laid them out to be pressed
and dried. At such times," he continues--and I have quoted the passage
for the sake of this revealing confession--"I experienced the joy which
every discovery of a new form of life gives to the lover of nature,
almost equal to those raptures which I afterwards felt at every capture
of new butterflies on the Amazon, or at the constant stream of new
species of birds, beetles and butterflies in Borneo, the Moluccas, and
the Aru Islands."[4]

Anything in the shape of gardening papers and catalogues which came in
his way was eagerly read, and to this source he owed his first interest
in the fascinating orchid.