Sir Francis Darwin

“ As one who loves wind-instruments, I like to think that the flutes, oboes, and clarinets are the flowers of my vernal orchestra, decorating the great mass of stringed instruments with streaks and flames of colour.
In real music, we cannot say why certain sounds make an appropriate opening for a symphony ”

“ I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday than a man can dispense with food. . . . Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go my way whether or no” (3rd April 1855) .
In September 1855 he was at Folkestone, whence he wrote to Mrs Watson about Little Dorrit, to which he at the time intended to give the name Nobody’s Fault: “The new story is everywhere—heaving in the sea, flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind. ”

“ The spring is the happiest season for those who love plants, who delight to watch and record the advent of old friends as the great procession of green leaves and beautiful flowers unwinds itself with a glory which no familiarity can tarnish. ”

“ The Presidency of the Royal Society, which Hooker held 1873–78, was clearly a great strain, but he carried out the work (which is in fact that of a ministry of science) with conspicuous success.
In January 1873 he wrote to Darwin:—“I quite agree as to the awful honour of P. R. S. . . . but, my dear fellow, I don’t want to be crowned head of science. I dread it—‘Uneasy is the head, etc.’—and my beloved Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded.” ”

“ But the autumn months have a glory of their own which may vie with the brightest hues of flowers. This great and beautiful panorama begins with the yellowing of the lime-leaves, which may occur as early as 17th August, but on the average is seen on 14th September. It is followed towards the end of September by a brown tint, showing itself in the leaves of the horse-chestnut. It is appropriate that these two species, which are not indigenous, [2] should be the first to fade into glory. ”

“ I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John’s wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland’s Dictionary of English Plant Names, 1886, I found that H. perforatum was called Balm of Warrior’s Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant is Hypericum androsæmum, known as Tutsan, said to mean toute saine, as curing all hurts. ”

“ Governesses used to tell us that the seasons of the year each consist of three months, and of these March, April, and May make the springtime. I should like to break the symmetry, and give February to spring, which would then include February, March, April, and May. It has been said that winter is but autumn “shyly shaking hands with spring.” We will, accordingly, make winter a short link of two months—an autumnal and a vernal hand—December and January. It is a little sad for autumn to have to make room for chill November alongside of the happier months of September and October. ”

“ Mr Galpin has written an admirable book on old musical instruments. His knowledge, which is first hand, is the harvest of many years’ research; and, like the best type of learned authors, he has the power of sharing his knowledge with the ignorant. ”

“ Whatever Hooker may have been he was not stupid, and though nowadays it is easy to feel surprise that his long-continued familiarity with Darwin’s work had not earlier convinced him of the doctrine of evolution by means of natural selection, we must ascribe it rather to his early education in the sacrosanct meaning of the word species. ”

“ Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild chamomile was known in the Eastern counties as Mawther; and this, as all lovers of Dickens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the Suffolk dialect.
The elder used to be known as the bour-tree. I fear that the name is extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar with it in his youth. ”

“ More than once during the day I thought of John Cok, the brother of St Bartholomew’s beholding five centuries ago within the same walls and under the same noble vault, the coronation of the future victor of Agincourt. . . .”
John Cok is a valuable witness as regards the history of the hospital, especially as to the mastership of John Wakeryng, who held office for forty years. Cok became Rentar of the Hospital, and the chief work of his life was the writing of the Cartulary (which he called a Rental) , recording rents due to the hospital, deeds of gift, papal bulls, and other documents. ”

“ There is something delightfully picturesque in the thought of man thus helped and guided in some of his most vital operations by the proceedings of the world of plants and animals, to whom that hard task-master Natural Selection has taught so much.
I have gone through Blomefield’s Calendar, recording for each species the number of days between the earliest and latest known dates of flowering. Thus the Mezereon did not flower earlier than 11th January or later than 2nd February; this means that the date of flowering may, as far as we know, vary to the extent of twenty-three days. ”

“ But duckweeds grow so crowded together that they are probably fertilised, to a great extent, by contact with their neighbours, without aid from the animal kingdom. We may also imagine the duckweed reproving the pine for his extravagance in the matter of pollen production. This, however, is necessary, because the pollen being sown broadcast by the wind, it is a matter of chance whether or not a grain reaches the stigma of its own species, and the chance of its doing so is clearly increased by multiplying the number of pollen-grains produced. ”

“ In 1810 William Airy was transferred to Colchester, where, if there were fewer smugglers, there was more opportunity for education; and George was sent to a school in a street bearing the attractive name of Sir Isaac’s Walk. Four years later Airy went to the Colchester Grammar School, where he remained until 1819, when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. The only point of interest connected with his school life is the record (in his own words) of Airy’s remarkable verbal memory. ”

“ Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability derived from the Latin aculentus, prickly, which became in French aiglent. Hence came the French names of the plant eglantier and our eglantine.
Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to come from the Flemish Kroes, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grows wild in England, and seems by some botanists to be considered indigenous, should have a Flemish name. ”

“ Here, as in the rye, the pollen is protected until the actual moment when it starts on its voyage through the air.
Another of the Nettle tribe, Pilea serpyllifolia—a plant often cultivated in our greenhouses—is also explosive, and its little puffs of smoke-like pollen have gained for it the popular name of the artillery plant. Its power of explosion must be of value to it as counterbalancing the disadvantage, to a wind-fertilised plant, of such a lowly habit. ”

“ Mr Galpin places the citole in the same class as the gittern. He says that this instrument has been much misunderstood, and since I do not desire to add my quota to the injustice under which this unfortunate instrument suffers, I shall pass on to the mandore and lute. The essential characteristic of these instruments is that their bodies, instead of having the flat back of the guitar, are rounded. Though the body is now built of strips of wood or ivory, its form is “reminiscent of the time when the body or resonator consisted of a simple gourd or half-gourd covered with skin.” ”

“ Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable: [96d] I have often admired p. 97the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key. One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper. ”

“ Macready said: “I swear to heaven that, as a piece of passion and playfulness—er—indescribably mixed up together, it does—er—no, really, Dickens! amaze me as profoundly as it moves me. . . . How is it got at—er—how is it done—er—how one man can—well? It lays me on my—er—back, and it is of no use talking about it!” (ii., p. 196) .
Dickens seems to have been thought to have done a wrong to Jews in general by his character Fagin in Oliver Twist. ”

“ If the pollen is exposed to the wind it will be liable to be wetted and injured. Catkins—such as those of the walnut or hazel—give some protection to the pollen, since the stamens are covered in by tile-like scales; but where—as in the grasses and plantains—the anthers hang far out of the flowers, the pollen is easily injured. Some of the cereals protect themselves against injury by means of a remarkably rapid growth of the filaments; thus the anthers remain hidden within the flowers until the last moment, and, under the influence of a warm sunny morning, rapidly protrude themselves. ”

“ When Greenwich was first founded, the longitude determination at sea depended to a great extent on measuring the distance between stars and the moon. Hence accurate tables of the position of the moon were essential, and the preparation of these tables has always been considered to be the chief care of Greenwich. The observations were made with a transit telescope which could only be used when the moon was passing the meridian, until Airy in 1843 persuaded the Board of Visitors to take steps for constructing a new instrument which would enable him to observe the moon in any position. ”

“ The trial of Thurtell by Judge Park was also a cause celèbre. There was a ballad of the day in which the victim is described with some bloodthirsty detail which I omit:
“His name was Mr William Weare,
He lived in Lyons Inn.”
After the murder Thurtell drove back to London and had a hearty supper at an eating-house. Judge Park, who tried him, is said to have exclaimed: “Commit a murder and eat six pork chops! Good God, what dreams the man must have had.” Catherine Hayes was also a well-known miscreant. ”

“ In 1855 Joseph began his official life at Kew on being appointed assistant to his father. And ten years later, on Sir William’s death, he succeeded as a matter of course to the Directorship.
Shortly before this, i.e. in 1854, he was the recipient of an honour greatly coveted by men of science, namely the award of the Royal Medal. He is characteristically pleased for the sake of the science of Botany rather than for himself, and refers to the neglect that botany has generally experienced at the hands of the Society in comparison with zoological subjects. ”

“ Now, though the temperature has undoubtedly a great effect on the time of flowering, it is by no means the only element in the problem. The first plant on my list is Ranunculus ficaria, which I noted as flowering on 1st April, whereas in Blomefield the mean of seventeen yearly observations is 28th February, the earliest date for this plant being 21st January, the latest 28th March. The extreme lateness of the Celandine was doubtless due to the cold spring of 1917. But what are the elements of the problem which fixed on this plant the general habit of flowering early in the year? ”

“ The service-tree is a hardy creature, for its buds are naked and unprotected, like Pampas Indians who are proud of sleeping uncovered, and of seeing, as they rise, their forms outlined in the hoar-frost. ”

“ Mr Galpin (p. 75) gives a figure of a man playing a Crowd with a bow, instead of plucking the strings with the fingers as shown in sculptured Irish Crosses. What makes the figure so especially interesting, is that there is clearly no means of stopping the strings, i.e., of altering the length of the vibrating region, and therefore altering the pitch. No one, I fancy, would have guessed that the bow was of more ancient lineage than the fiddle. The finger-board, which transforms the instrument into an undeniable relative of the violin, is known to have existed in the thirteenth century. ”

“ In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the name milk-wort have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means “much milk,” and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle. ”

“ In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life. But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.
In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower [100a] because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,—“three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . ”

“ In January 1842 Dickens started for America, and on 31st January he writes—“I can give you no conception of my welcome here. There never was a king or emperor upon the earth so cheered and followed by crowds.” ”

“ The first thing the unscriptural curate does, is to turn out his fellow curate, the son of him who was vicar before his father. . . . The Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and I have in vain expostulated; he perseveres in his harshness and cruelty.”
Towards the end of 1843 he made his well-known attack on the scandal of the State of Pennsylvania not paying interest to English investors—he being one. He declares them to be “men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light” (i., p. 352) .
Sydney Smith died 22nd February 1845 from disease of the heart. ”