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 i857-1862 293 solicited intimacy is all on one side. No reciprocation is possible on the other. I suppose that most young fellows pass through the stage of observing and loving animals. When at Hurst I traversed that experience, but it was brought to an end by the failure in acuteness of my sight. Owing to the injury to my eyes during the voyage from Iceland I had to abandon the study of Nature. But I took to reptiles, and collected newts, efts, frogs and slow-worms. I was on my way from Hurst to town, thence to proceed to Lew, and I took with me in a sort of carpet-bag a collection of these creatures. En route, I fell asleep, and by some means or other the bag gaped and the whole collection got out and swarmed over the carriage. It was not possible for me to collect and replace them all before the next station was reached. Happily I was alone in my compartment. So, when next the train stopped, I whipped out with my bag, and jumped into another carriage. The porter opened the door of my late tenancy to an elderly gentleman and his equally elderly wife. When, seeing live reptiles on the seats and crawling and wriggling on the floor, some up the sides, apparently studying the advertisements, they uttered exclamations of dismay, and the porter, calling to the station-master, said : " What have we here ? a Noah's ark for creepy crawleys and wriggleti-wiggleties ? How on earth has this come about ? 99 The lady and gentleman entered another carriage. After a discussion, the porters—there were now two on the platform— got mops and brooms and swept the compartment out before the train was permitted to proceed. Acclimatization of plants I tried, but met with little success. I brought with me the gentiana bavarica and verna from Switzerland, and planted them out on Galaford Down about a dew-pond that is there, a very ancient dew-pond by the way. The plants flowered in spring and summer, flowered in autumn and winter, and died of exhaustion. They needed a winter sleep beneath the snow, and that they could not obtain in Devon. If there be one wild flower above another that appeals to my heart, it is the harebell. It does not grow in Devon. It is found on the Yorkshire wolds. Nowhere have I seen it in such luxuriance as at Fountains Abbey, breaking out of the joints in the ruined walls of the church. The plant should be really called the