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56 JAMES BACKHOUSE.
where we liave probably a greater number of interesting alpine plants,
including Ilieracia, gathered together within a small space than any-
where else in Britain, was his favourite district for a holiday ; and lie
was the discoverer, or one of the discoverers, of almost all the interest-
ing plants that have been found there of late years,— as, for instance,
Arenaria uli/jinosa, Polygaln idlglnosn, and Viola arenaria, all three of
which were additions to the British flora.
In person, Mr. Backhouse was below the average stature, and his
long flowing grey beard, worn since the date of his travels, made him a
man upon whom the eye hxed in a crowd. We are told that it was
only by practice that he became fluent as a speaker, but that was before
the time of our own knowledge of him. The great characteristics of
his public addresses were earnestness and simplicity. He possessed a
wonderful command of detail, and power of elucidating his ideas by
apt illustrations and reminiscences ; always clear, always practical,
never aiming at ornament of style or soaring aloft to transcendental
heights, or losing sight of the plain facts of life ; in doctrinal theo-
ries as ready to maintain his own opinions as to respect the sincere
convictions of others ; skilful, when controversy became unprofitable,
with his pithy common-sense and ready illustrative faculty to pour oil
upon the troubled waters. In private life he always seemed equally at
home with old and young, and with people of all grades of education
and conditions of station; free, as few are free, from taint of dogma-
tism or worldlincss or perversity orhnstiness of temper, his unaffected
sociability and geniality, and wide range of knowledge and sympathy,
made his presence welcome wherever he caine.
The following anecdote of a botanical excursion, in which the present
writer was his only conipanion, is eminently characteristic. We
went to stay for a few days at a little village in tlie centre of a tract of
rocky hills which had never been searclied botanically,—a hamlet of
some two or three hundred inhabitants, so isolated that the post only
came there twice a we^ ; and when a plot of strawberries were
planted there a few years before our visit, threc-fuurf lis of the inhabi-
tants were (piite ignorant of what the fruit was like. The landed
proprietor was non-resident, and we found that the mines on which
•the inhabitants principally depended had been very unproductive for
several years. The only ])lace of worship was an Independent chapel,
with the minister of which the religious and mental culture of the