Samuel Butler and natural history: a supplementary note

Abstract

I know as well as possible what they will say. They will say of me, 'He doubtless imbibed his love of science from the example of his father, who was an excellent botanist, and who may be said to have almost created the botanical department in the Shrewbury Museum.1 Fired by the desire to emulate, etc., etc.' My father knows the names of a good many plants, and if you give him a plant he does not know, he can worry out its name from some one or other of the many botanical works of reference. And he can cut the ligulae to tie the plant down to the blotting-paper; and he can make the gum; and he can strap the plant down with consummate neatness, and write its name under it, and say where it comes from.