194 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



to recognize the value of anything which is reported 

 of the coy maiden, unless it be put in language which 

 is good to swear by, and can have no duplicate inter- 

 pretation. 



They have forgotten the father that bare them and 

 look not to the hole of the rock whence they were 

 digged. The divine Aristotle and learned Theo- 

 phrastus, because they presumed to speak of the rose 

 and the lily in one breath, or divided plants into 

 natural groups according to their size and life- 

 duration, are cast off and treated with scorn, or 

 "damned with faint praise." Who does not know 

 (they ask) that the lily belongs to the monocotyledons, 

 and the rose to the dicotyledons, while the perianth 

 segments are petaloid in the one case, and in the 

 other the flower is gamosepalous and polyandrous? 

 How edifying such knowledge as this must be to the 

 rustic youth ! How much sweeter such harmonious 

 sounds to the gentle maiden than the fragrance of the 

 flower or the perfume of the attar ! 



Without for a moment wishing to depreciate the 

 services which a technical terminology is calculated 

 to render to science, who does not feel that we have 

 too long been enslaved thereby ? Some years ago I 

 took a friend into the fields, and told him the names 

 of the meadow florets, and the woodland earth-stars. 

 I recalled some of the traditions relating to the wind- 

 flower and primrose, told of the fairy favours which 

 Shakespeare found in the cowslip, and the beauty 

 the poets .had seen in the daisy ; and innocently 

 looked into his face for some indication of pleasure. 

 'He was one of your orthodox schoolmen, who knew 

 a daisy only as "one of the corymbiferous composite 

 with conical receptacle and obtuse phyllaiies." What 

 was his amazement to find that I knew nothing of 

 these beautiful terms, and had even presumed to study 

 nature without first studying the scientific classifica- 

 tion ! Had I told him that I had learned to read 

 Greek without committing the alphabet to memory, 

 or had picked my way through Horace without having 

 learned the whole of the irregular verbs, he would 

 probably have thought the one equally improbable 

 •with the other ; or if he had credited me with being 

 truthful and honest, he would in all probability have 

 pitied me for taking such an unauthorised course to 

 , acquire knowledge. 



It is too much to say of the orthodox method of 



studying nature in the past— A^;« avoiis change tout 



.cda — as Molierc puts its; but it may with truth be 



.asserted that the new-world nature-lover is doing a 



great deal to bring the change about. 



Is it necessary for me to make the assertion that 

 there may be nature-lovers who are not naturalists, 

 just as there may be theologians who are not doctors 

 of divinity, or flirts who are not real lovers ? Do I 

 need to affirm that the poet may know just as much 

 about a celandine, and admire its golden chalice 

 quite as largely as the botanist, though the one knows 

 it only as the earliest of spring flowers, while the | 



other can recognize it by petal or stamen, carpel or 

 nectary, as one of the thalamifloral angiosperms, 

 belonging to the order Ranunculacea; and the class 

 Dicotyledones ? 



One might have almost believed, and we could 

 all have devoutly wished, that such books as "The 

 History of Selborne," and "The Journal of a Natu- 

 ralist," whose popularity has been great, would have 

 led our scientific observers to adopt a similar style 

 when presenting their discoveries and observations to 

 the world. We are, however, proverbially slow in 

 learning to adapt ourselves to the needs of the times. 

 The man of science has a righteous abhorrence of 

 pandering to popular taste. He prefers that his 

 profound discoveries should be a secret to all, save to 

 those who can plod through his cumbersome Latin — 

 unknown of Livy and Catullus, rather than that they 

 should be told forth in the vulgar tongue, and thus 

 made cheap and common. 



It is with no wish to ignore our new school of 

 nature-lovers and their works that I refer to one or 

 two American authors in the first place as types of the 

 New World writers. My title is purposely selected 

 to refer both to the geographical and the chronological. 

 Where shall one begin. " Whittier," one has said, 

 " using a humble vocabulary, exercises his gentle, 

 though uneducated genius in finding natural beauties 

 amid the hedgerows." Does not the same apply to 

 many another writer from across the big pond ? Did 

 Walt Whitman ever attempt to i^ronounce the shib- 

 boleth of the honoured Asa Gray or Louis Agassiz ? 

 Yet who, wishing to be put at once into touch with 

 nature, would not rather take a copy of Whitman's 

 " Specimen Days in America," into his pocket, than 

 carry with him " The Popular Flora " of Gray, not- 

 withstanding all the illustrations contained in the 

 latter ? 



Such a passage as the following translates us in a 

 trice from busy mart and crowded street to the open 

 glade and cheerful mead. " A while since the croak- 

 ing of the pond-frogs, and the first white of the dog- 

 wood blossoms. Now the golden dandelions in ' 

 endless profusion, spotting the ground everywhere. 

 The white cherry and pear, blowing the wild violets 

 with their blue eyes looking up and saluting my feet, 

 as I saunter the wood-edge — the rosy blush of budding 

 apple-trees — the light clear emerald hue of the wheat- 

 fields, the darker green of the rye, a warm elasticity 

 pervading the air — -the cedar-bushes profusely decked 

 with their little brown apples, the summer fully 

 awakening, the convocation of blackbirds, garrulous 

 flocks of them, gathering on some tree, and makmg 

 the hour and place noisy as I sit near." 



How like old Gilbert White in many respects is the 

 annexed reference to the welcome spring emigrant. 

 "Crossing the Delaware, I noticed unusual numbers 

 of swallows in flight, circling, darting, graceful 

 beyond description, close to the water. Thick, 

 around the bows of the ferry-boat as she lay tied in 



