"Yes, perhaps," he said. "But who was he?"
"I don't know yet," I returned. "I can only see that his name
was Sibthorpe."
"Sibthorpe!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Why, this is the very
memorial I've been looking for all over the abbey and had
pretty well given up all hopes of finding it." With that he
went to it and began studying the inscription, which was in
Latin. John Sibthorpe, I found, was a distinguished botanist,
author of the Flora Graeca, who died over a century ago.
I asked him why he was interested in Sibthorpe's memorial.
"Well, you see, I'm a great botanist myself," he explained,
"and have been familiar with his name and work all my life.
Of course," he added, "I don't mean I'm great in the sense
that Sibthorpe was. I'm only a little local botanist, quite
unknown outside my own circle; I only mean that I'm a great
lover of botany."
I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great
man's life, and found some very curious things in it. He was
a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, also a great botanist, who
succeeded the still greater Dillenius as Sherardian Professor
of Botany at Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six
years, and during that time he delivered one lecture, which
was a failure.
