It should not be supposed that Gibson was so confident of himself and his own resources that he disdained the work and experience and knowledge of others. He was a good reader and a hard student. The pages of his books are crowded with passages out of his favorite poets, and his note-books show the careful husbanding of the fruits of his reading on all the themes nearest to his heart. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Browning, in all that they have seen and sung of nature, were his authorities often cited, and annotated, and winnowed into his note-books. The New England poets he knew and loved, and shared all their honest preference for those home products which so many count homely and call commonplace because they happen to be common. Thoreau he knew thoroughly and loved as a master in the great profession of nature-study; and his references to him are always those of a modest disciple, his bearing and attitude that of deference and respect. Hawthorne, too, was one whose subtle and spiritual genius found a sympathetic and ready interpreter in his own imagination. Darwin he knew, and all his works which bore upon cross-fertilization had mastered. When he gave the wonderful talks on flowers and their insect allies to the townspeople and farmers of Washington, an old “native” came to him, and in the dialect of old New England said: “Mr. Gibson, do you mean to tell me thet thet’s whut Darwin’s been tellin’ ’baout?” “Yes,” was the reply, “that is one of the things he has been talking about.” “Wal,” was the rejoinder, “I never took no stock in Darwin afore, but I sh’ll think a heap on him naow.” Indeed, there was, in all his lectures, the frankest acknowledgment of his indebtedness--of the common debt of all of us--to those pioneers in this fallow field of knowledge. He stinted no praise, no honor to their names, and used their work with hearty acknowledgment. He knew Sprengel, Darwin, Müller, well and, following their lead into the enchanted and enchanting country of new knowledge, soon made himself a student at first hand of the things he had been taught by these great masters.