INTEODTJCTION. 27 



hearty communion with nature, and said he should 

 never forget that day. 



The influences of altitude, exposure, aspect, shade, 

 temperature, and moisture, in governing the distribu- 

 tion of plants, I shall fully enter upon seriatim in the 

 following chapters, tracing the flowers as they appear 

 in succession through the different months, and ap- 

 propriating them to each, yet not neglecting their 

 combinations on rock, rivulet, morass, wood, heath, 

 sequestered lane, sunny bank, or sea-coast. 



The variety in the localities affected by plants is 

 a source of interminable enjoyment to the exploring 

 botanist who rambles in search of them, and who is 

 thus led to perpetually changing scenes of landscape 

 beauty ; and is not obliged, like the angler, to dodge 

 about, or dose by the root of an old willow, for a 

 dozen consecutive hours, and be at last obliged to 

 confess, as a "Waltonian once did to me, that he might 

 just as well have been lashing a bucket ! There is 

 almost always some new idea, or the hope of some new 

 acquisition, to tempt the fancy of the botanical rambler. 

 Instigated first by the love of novelty common to all 

 mankind, he may " range fresh fields and pastures 

 new," or hurry to gather " new flowers," with all the 

 ardour of a neophyte. There is happiness even in 

 this impression for, as DETDEN says, 



" 'Tis not for nothing that we life pursue, 

 It pays our hopes with something still that's new." 



But the love of knowledge follows upon the excitement 

 of novelty, and the looker-out returns home with an 

 anxiety to understand what he has discovered, and 

 to trace the chain of its affinities through all their 

 divarications. 



