Page:Makers of British botany.djvu/197

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USES OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
157

throws off orange-coloured dust-like "spores," which attack the Barberry, and so the cycle is completed[1].

I still possess his dried specimens of other species of Æcidium attacking various kinds of plants, which he collected for comparison with that of the Barberry.

As abortive attempts to find coal had been made in some counties, he pointed out the value of Geology in at least intimating where coal was possible and also where it was impossible. It was not, he said, that a "little knowledge is a dangerous thing," as no one would become learned if he did not begin with a little, but it was the hasty deductions that were valueless and often dangerous.

As a practical illustration of this under the false assumption that the roots made the "bulb" of mangold-wurzel, he noticed the common practice of stripping off the leaves of plants, and explained to them that unless they were required for fodder, it was a wasteful practice, as the leaves (and not the roots, as they supposed) were the makers of the "bulbs." Indeed, in 1860, Prof. Jas. Buckman proved that it lessens the weight of mangold-wurzel by nearly one half.

Science was not even shut out at the Hitcham Horticultural Society's Exhibitions, for he always had his own marquee erected and a large board over the entrance with "The Marquee Museum" upon it, the letters being composed of Hitcham freshwater mussel shells. During the day of the show, he would deliver "lecturets" from time to time on the various specimens exhibited.

The following are samples of the latter. Cases of land and fresh-water shells of Hitcham. Photographs of microscopic objects enlarged, including the first ever made, by the Rev. H. Kingsley, Tutor of Sidney College, Camb. in 1855. A case containing living specimens of the smallest British Mammal, the harvest mouse. Pearls from British molluscs. The slow-worm

  1. In his printed Report on the Diseases of Wheat, written for private circulation only, he has added in MS.—"In specimens of true mildew, the three formsUredo rubigo, U. linearis and Puccinia graminis, coexist simultaneously in the same sori, as well as numerous intermediate forms, which establish the specific identity of these fungi." U. rubigo-vera is now regarded as a form of Puccinia rubigo-vera and Æcidium asperifolii.