WILD PLOAVERS OE AUGUST. 347 



thus frankly admits the loss of pleasure he thereby 

 sustained, as many other tourists and mere pictu- 

 resque-seeing travellers have also done. " It is said 

 that to be ignorant of a science is to be cut off from 

 a source of enjoyment. The truth of this I was com- 

 pelled, experimentally, to prove during my wanderings 

 through these alpine provinces ; for my limited ac- 

 quaintance with botany prevented me from examining 

 and enjoying the rare and beautiful specimens which 

 every where abound." 



Now this is substantially the argument I have taken 

 up to prove in these chapters, that the tourist or 

 wanderer who is, in some degree, acquainted with 

 botany, greatly enlarges the sources of his delight, 

 and has an incentive to action and movement, which 

 the mere superficial observer is entirely deprived of. 

 Yet strange to say very few general travellers know 

 any thing of botany, and consequently whether in 

 India or Persia, in Europe or America, the information 

 they give on this subject merely amounts to the bare 

 fact that in certain places myriads of the most beau- 

 tiful flowers delighted the eve, or matchless odours 



*/ 



from them filled the air ; but further more their 

 " limited acquaintance with botany," entirely forbids 

 them to say. This negation is not only tantalizing 

 but humiliating ; it depresses curiosity, baffles explo- 

 ration, and leaves imagination to draw upon error to 

 an unlimited extent. The man who was unable 

 (though no architect) to decide upon the order of the 

 columns in a ruined Grecian temple, would be justly 

 considered ignorant ; and in the present day, surely, 

 to know nothing of botany, argues at the very least, I 

 should say, a defect in the organs of taste and percep- 



