DECEMBER. 561 



the recollection. Hence I have rather aimed to direct 

 the student's attention in the first instance to the 

 fields of Nature in their novelty and beauty, implying 

 the after study of those objects, rather than to turn to 

 Nature after imbibing the systems of Man. Let us 

 be first pleased, and then instructed. Yet to system 

 we must turn at last, and as it is an object of impor- 

 tance in any study easily to ascertain the names of 

 the objects that come under examination, let the 

 student by all means take the Linnsean classification 

 for his primary guide, the facility here given to 

 naming plants being far greater than in any other, as 

 respects the Phanerogamious tribes.* 



On this point it is needless to dilate further, for 

 although in the present day the "Natural System" 

 has been lauded to the skies as the most philosophical 

 method of ascertaining the properties and affinities of 

 plants, while the Linnaean has been proposed to be 

 only remembered as a system that has passed away, I 

 do not hesitate to declare that the humble collecting 

 Botanist, seeking chiefly for pleasure and delight, in 

 continually coming upon " some little document of 

 poetry in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cow- 



* Let it be remembered that I have no wish to depreciate the Natural 

 System, which the professor and systematic botanist, with a life to devote 

 to the subject, must necessarily study but I think few can master its 

 intricacies in the first instance without a sacrifice of time which every 

 lover of vegetable nature has not to spare, even if there was but one 

 accredited "Natural System," instead of every writer attempting changes 

 to fabricate something more to his own liking. As a case in point I may 

 remark that I once came in contact with a gentleman who had heard 

 lectures on the Natural System from learned Professors, and well under- 

 stood theoretic botany and vegetable physiology, but having become a 

 family man, he told me he wanted to inform his children the names of 

 the common wild flowers occurring by every hedge side, and felt himself 

 unable to do so. Under my advice he soon found the Linnaean system 

 a ready key. 



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