120 Considerations on Botany, 



insects, &c., offer a never ending topic of enquiry and interest ; 

 but she can have little opportunity of observing for herself, of 

 applying the knowledge she obtains, of " solving riddles." 

 For her knowledge of living creatures, she must be indebted 

 chiefly to books and prints ; she will scarcely bring home in 

 her delicate fingers a young hedge-hog, a hornet, or a bat, 

 to compare with her books, and to ascertain their genus or 

 their species ; she will not dissect a monkey or a bear to study 

 their anatomy. The habits of animals are interesting ; she 

 reads, and takes all for granted : but, in the study of plants, 

 her interest is kept continually on the alert, by the practical 

 application of the knowledge she acquires. We do not sit 

 down to read Linnaeus's Genera Plantdrum, Withering's Bo- 

 tany, or Smith's English Flora, as we would Bingley's Animal 

 Biography, Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, Bewick, Buffon, &c. : 

 but we walk out, and day after day we see beautiful flowers 

 springing up in the sunshine — we would know what they are; 

 we see a lovely blossom, from which a butterfly as lovely 

 is extracting the honey — we would be acquainted with both; 

 but the butterfly disappears, we could not take it captive, 

 without alarming it, injuring its beauty, and giving it pain ; 

 the flower we may appropriate, may examine at our leisure ; 

 with a few books, and a very little assistance (or, if our love 

 of flowers be very great, with our books only), we may soon 

 learn to discover the genus of flowers, and, ere long, to distin^ 

 guish their species. In examining their construction with a 

 microscope, how many beauties do we find that had previously 

 been lost upon us ! The beauty of flowers does not lie wholly 

 in their vivid colours and bright contrasts : observe the starry 

 capsule of the corn-poppy, when its fragile petals have been 

 carried away by the winds ; see the blue corn-flower (com- 

 monly called blue-bottle), — what a beautiful coronet of sky- 

 blue florets ! every floret a fairy vase, in the depth of which 

 nature prepares sweet nectar for the butterfly and the bee ! 

 But when these have disappeared, there is beauty also in the 

 winged children they have left, rocking each in its green cra- 

 dle. In some of the species, these winged offspring are 

 peculiarly beautifiil ; they seem like fairies' shuttlecocks, ele- 

 gantly variegated at the base, and set with the most delicate 

 feathers of a jet black ; so delicate are these feathers, that to 

 the unassisted eye they show like hairs. Then examine how 

 the pistil is affixed to its centre ; how one minute gi'oove is 

 fitted to another with a nicety of mechanism, so finished, so 

 beautiful ! What human hand could form one seed like this?-— 

 this little seed, which, in its minute and exquisite perfection^ 



