Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/130

 "Mr. Hume at once appreciated the inference, and W then learned that in his youth he had studied geology, and had known Dr. Mantell, who first discovered remains of the Iguanodon and other Saurians in Weal- den Beds, in Sussex. At this period I also accompanied Mr. Hume to Hawkhurst, in Kent, to obtain specimens of Cardamine hiilhifera. These outings proved to me that Mr. Hume possessed the ready perception of a naturalist experienced in field work. Many who have limited their study of the natural sciences to the library and laboratory are quite at a loss in the field. I have pointed out a rare plant growing amidst other herbage to more than one such student, and they have failed to detect it until their eyes were within two or three feet of it.

"When I first became assistant to Mr. Hume he informed me that if he lived long enough to accumulate a sufficiently large collection of plants his object was to establish an institute to assist amateur botanists whose business occupation did not permit them to resort to the British Museum of Natural History and to Kew Gardens to consult the botanical Hbraries and herbarium specimens . there deposited. In my own experience as an amateur I had found that, while I could generally identify indi- genous British plants with the aid of Bentham and Hooker's * Flora ' and Babington's * Manual/ the alien species frequently met with as garden-escapes and accidental introductions with farm seeds, fodder, etc., occasioned me great difficulty and loss of time; and upon my representing this to Mr. Hume, he decided that his herbarium should comprise all species recorded as having been found quasi-wild in Britain.

"To obtain specimens of the latter he obtained cata- logues fr9m German botanists and purchased many sheets of specimens. Some of these were carelessly pressed ; others had been grown in Continental gardens, and as I had