He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of the river in his marches--above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day gathering up the ugly leavings. Many associations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy which he had caused to be built for her--called from its pleasant round lines the _Bumble Bee_--would paddle about the reach. After her death he would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not suffered to pass into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank. In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak--between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late--one night 1 a.m. They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress--_Erecta vividis_: 'I remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that Murray _first_ sent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was made by A. Waterer in 1870.']