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"A thousand thanks, sir," said he to my father. "I have found all that you told me of, and I am indebted to you for a charming walk." My father respectfully rose, and made a civil reply. The stranger had grown quite familiar, and even asked if his young "brother botanist" did not think of returning to Paris. My father replied in the affirmative, and opened his tin box to put his book back in it.
At 33 degrees east of north from the camp, about eight miles distant, there is a high wooded tent-hill on the range; this I have named Mount Muller, after my friend the well-known botanist of Victoria. All round about are rough stony hills with grassy valleys between, having spinifex growing on their sides and tops.
But we are constrained by our experience to admit the strong likelihood, in botany, that varieties on the one hand, and what are called closely-related species on the other, do not differ except in degree. Whenever this wider difference separating the latter can be spanned by intermediate forms, as it sometimes is, no botanist long resists the inevitable conclusion.
What a harvest for the botanist was among them! I longed to stay there a week to examine and collect. But time pressed; and, indeed, collecting plants in the wet season is a difficult and disappointing work.
It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused provision of every sort. The reserve force of society grows more and more amazing to one's thought.
Years and years that bush rope will wait for a man's blood, and when he comes within reach it will have it. We are well down now among the tree-stems grown over with rich soft green moss and delicate filmy-ferns. I should think that for a botanist these south-eastern slopes of Mungo Mah Lobeh would be the happiest hunting grounds in all West Africa.
I always considered it must be just like our garden.... I remember with pleasure my mother's beds of wild flowers, which, with delight, I used as a child to attend with her; it gave me that pleasure in observing their beauties and varieties that, though I never have had time to become a botanist, few can imagine, in my many journeys, how I have been pleased and refreshed by observing and enjoying the wild flowers on my way."
I can fancy, however, that it might tire in time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women's society. The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued as Humana, perplexia negligens. The species is, however, common elsewhere.
A botanist would find a rich harvest on the banks of the Leeba. This would be his best season, for the flowers all run rapidly to seed, and then insects of every shape spring into existence to devour them. The climbing plants display great vigor of growth, being not only thick in the trunk, but also at the very point, in the manner of quickly-growing asparagus.
At that time, the study I am now speaking of would have been well placed, the opportunity was good, and I had some temptation to profit by it; for the satisfaction I saw in the eyes of Anet, when he came home loaded with new discovered plants, set me two or three times on the point of going to herbalize with him, and I am almost certain that had I gone once, I should have been caught, and perhaps at this day might have been an excellent botanist, for I know no study more congenial to my natural inclination, than that of plants; the life I have led for these ten years past, in the country, being little more than a continual herbalizing, though I must confess, without object, and without improvement; but at the time I am now speaking of I had no inclination for botany, nay, I even despised, and was disgusted at the idea, considering it only as a fit study for an apothecary.
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