The Life and Letters-1 [62]
an authority in such matters. He always had a great liking for the simple microscope, and maintained that nowadays it was too much neglected, and that one ought always to see as much as possible with the simple before taking to the compound microscope. In one of his letters he speaks on this point, and remarks that he always suspects the work of a man who never uses the simple microscope.
His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window of the study; it was lower than an ordinary table, so that he could not have worked at it standing; but this, from wishing to save his strength, he would not have done in any case. He sat at his dissecting-table on a curious low stool which had belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on a vertical spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he could turn easily from side to side. His ordinary tools, etc., were lying about on the table, but besides these a number of odds and ends were kept in a round table full of radiating drawers, and turning on a vertical axis, which stood close by his left side, as he sat at his microscope-table. The drawers were labelled, "best tools," "rough tools," "specimens," "preparations for specimens," etc. The most marked peculiarity of the contents of these drawers was the care with which little scraps and almost useless things were preserved; he held the well-known belief, that if you threw a thing away you were sure to want it directly--and so things accumulated.
If any one had looked at his tools, etc., lying on the table, he would have been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, and oddness.
At his right hand were shelves, with a number of other odds and ends, glasses, saucers, tin biscuit boxes for germinating seeds, zinc labels, saucers full of sand, etc., etc. Considering how tidy and methodical he was in essential things, it is curious that he bore with so many make- shifts: for instance, instead of having a box made of a desired shape, and stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds, but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much of his experimenting was of a simple kind, that he had no need for any elaboration, and I think his habit in this respect was in great measure due to his desire to husband his strength, and not waste it on inessential things.
His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he had a number of things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, etc., he tied threads of different colours round them. In particular he used this method when he had only two classes of objects to distinguish; thus in the case of crossed and self-fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with black and one with white thread, tied round the stalk of the flower. I remember well the look of two sets of capsules, gathered and waiting to be weighed, counted, etc., with pieces of black and of white thread to distinguish the trays in which they lay. When he had to compare two sets of seedlings, sowed in the same pot, he separated them by a partition of zinc-plate; and the zinc label, which gave the necessary details about the experiment, was always placed on a certain side, so that it became instinctive with him to know without reading the label which were the "crossed" and which were the "self-fertilised."
His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal not to lose the fruit of it, came out markedly in these crossing experiments--in the elaborate care he took not to make any confusion in putting capsules into wrong trays, etc., etc. I can recall his appearance as he counted seeds under the simple microscope with an alertness not usually characterising such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified each seed as a small demon trying to elude him by getting into the wrong heap, or jumping away altogether; and this gave to the work the excitement of a game. He had
His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window of the study; it was lower than an ordinary table, so that he could not have worked at it standing; but this, from wishing to save his strength, he would not have done in any case. He sat at his dissecting-table on a curious low stool which had belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on a vertical spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he could turn easily from side to side. His ordinary tools, etc., were lying about on the table, but besides these a number of odds and ends were kept in a round table full of radiating drawers, and turning on a vertical axis, which stood close by his left side, as he sat at his microscope-table. The drawers were labelled, "best tools," "rough tools," "specimens," "preparations for specimens," etc. The most marked peculiarity of the contents of these drawers was the care with which little scraps and almost useless things were preserved; he held the well-known belief, that if you threw a thing away you were sure to want it directly--and so things accumulated.
If any one had looked at his tools, etc., lying on the table, he would have been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, and oddness.
At his right hand were shelves, with a number of other odds and ends, glasses, saucers, tin biscuit boxes for germinating seeds, zinc labels, saucers full of sand, etc., etc. Considering how tidy and methodical he was in essential things, it is curious that he bore with so many make- shifts: for instance, instead of having a box made of a desired shape, and stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds, but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much of his experimenting was of a simple kind, that he had no need for any elaboration, and I think his habit in this respect was in great measure due to his desire to husband his strength, and not waste it on inessential things.
His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he had a number of things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, etc., he tied threads of different colours round them. In particular he used this method when he had only two classes of objects to distinguish; thus in the case of crossed and self-fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with black and one with white thread, tied round the stalk of the flower. I remember well the look of two sets of capsules, gathered and waiting to be weighed, counted, etc., with pieces of black and of white thread to distinguish the trays in which they lay. When he had to compare two sets of seedlings, sowed in the same pot, he separated them by a partition of zinc-plate; and the zinc label, which gave the necessary details about the experiment, was always placed on a certain side, so that it became instinctive with him to know without reading the label which were the "crossed" and which were the "self-fertilised."
His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal not to lose the fruit of it, came out markedly in these crossing experiments--in the elaborate care he took not to make any confusion in putting capsules into wrong trays, etc., etc. I can recall his appearance as he counted seeds under the simple microscope with an alertness not usually characterising such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified each seed as a small demon trying to elude him by getting into the wrong heap, or jumping away altogether; and this gave to the work the excitement of a game. He had