Next summer it will be six years since I made my first trial in the world.  My first public competition, small as it was, was an epoch in my life.  I had been attending (it was my first summer session) the botanical lectures at Chelsea.  One morning I observed a notice stuck up—­a notice of a public competition for medals, etc., to take place on the 1st August (if I recollect right).  It was then the end of May or thereabouts.  I remember looking longingly at the notice, and some one said to me, “Why don’t you go in and try for it?” I laughed at the idea, for I was very young, and my knowledge somewhat of the vaguest.  Nevertheless I mentioned the matter to S. [his brother-in-law.] when I returned home.  He likewise advised me to try, and so I determined I would.  I set to work in earnest, and perseveringly applied myself to such works as I could lay my hands on, Lindley’s and De Candolle’s “Systems” and the “Annales des Sciences Naturelles” in the British Museum.  I tried to read Schleiden, but my German was insufficient.

For a young hand I worked really hard from eight or nine in the morning until twelve at night, besides a long hot summer’s walk over to Chelsea two or three times a week to hear Lindley.  A great part of the time I worked till sunrise.  The result was a sort of ophthalmia which kept me from reading at night for months afterwards.

The day of the examination came, and as I went along the passage to go out I well remember dear Lizzie [His eldest sister, Mrs. Scott.], half in jest, half in earnest, throwing her shoe after me, as she said, for luck.  She was alone, beside S., in the secret, and almost as anxious as I was.  How I reached the examination room I hardly know, but I recollect finding myself at last with pen and ink and paper before me and five other beings, all older than myself, at a long table.  We stared at one another like strange cats in a garret, but at length the examiner (Ward) entered, and before each was placed the paper of questions and sundry plants.  I looked at my questions, but for some moments could hardly hold my pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could write them.  And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner’s “Times” as he quietly looked over the news of the day.

The examination began at eleven.  At two they brought in lunch.  It was a good meal enough, but the circumstances were not particularly favourable to enjoyment, so after a short delay we resumed our work.  It began to be evident between whom the contest lay, and the others determined that I was one man’s competitor and Stocks [John Ellerton Stocks, M.D., London, distinguished himself as a botanist in India.  He travelled and collected in Beloochistan and Scinde; died 1854.] (he is now in the East India service) the other.  Scratch, scratch, scratch!  Four o’clock came, the usual hour of closing