JOHN STUART MILL. 377 



acquainted with the vegetation of the district, and, at the time of his 

 death, had collected a mass of notes and observations on the subject. 

 It is believed to have been his intention to have printed these as the 

 foundation of a flora of Avignon. 



In the slight contributions to the literature of botany made by Mr. 

 Mill, there is nothing which gives any inkling of the great intellectual 

 powers of their writer. Though always clear and accurate, they are 

 merely such notes as any working botanical collector is able to supply 

 in abundance. Mainly content with the pursuit as an out-door occupa- 

 tion, with such an amount of home-work as was necessary to determine 

 the names and affinities of the species, Mr. Mill never penetrated deep- 

 ly into the philosophy of botany, so as to take rank among those who 

 have, like Herbert Spencer, advanced that science by original work 

 either of experience or generalization, or have entered into the battle- 

 field where the great biological questions of the day are being fought 

 over. The writer of this notice well remembers meeting, a few years 

 since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician, with his trousers turned 

 up out of the mud, and armed with the tin insignia of his craft, busily 

 occupied in the search after a marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy 

 wood on the clay to the north of London. 



But, however followed, the investigation of Nature cannot fail to 

 influence the mind in the direction of a more just appreciation of the 

 necessity of system in arrangement, and of the principles which must 

 regulate all attempts to express notions of system in a classification. 

 Traces of this are not difficult to find in Mr. Mill's writings. It may 

 be safely stated that the chapters on classification in the " Logic " 

 would not have taken the form they have had not the writer been a 

 naturalist as well as a logician. The views expressed so clearly in these 

 chapters are chiefly founded on the actual needs experienced by the 

 systematic botanist, and the argument is largely sustained by references 

 to botanical systems and arrangements. Most botanists agree with 

 Mr. Mill in his objections to Dr. Whewell's views of a natural classi- 

 fication by resemblance to " types " instead of in accordance with well- 

 selected characters ; and, indeed, the whole of these chapters are well 

 deserving the careful study of naturalists, notwithstanding that the 

 wonderfully rapid progress in recent years of new ideas, lying at the 

 very root of all the natural sciences, may be thought by some to give 

 the whole argument, in spite of its logical excellence, a somewhat anti- 

 quated flavor. 



HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC. 



BY W. MISTTO. 



It was in his earlier life, when his enthusiasm for knowledge was 

 fresh, and his active mind, " all as hungry as the sea," was reaching 

 out eagerly and strenuously to all sorts of food for thought, literary, 

 philosophical, and political, that Mr. Mill set himself, among other 



