1 34 Botany, as a Study for young Peojjle. 



the knowledge which I went purposely to obtain, and re- 

 turned but little wiser. On one occasion our party was ac- 

 companied by an able and experienced botanist ; but there 

 were older persons than ourselves, and gentlemen, in com- 

 pany, who, of course, engrossed the whole of his time and 

 attention ; and those who were the best qualified to under- 

 stand, and the most interested in obtaining, the information 

 he might communicate, were precisely those who learned 

 nothing from the visit but what their own eyes could teach 

 them. Even supposing the botanist to have been at liberty 

 to attend to ourselves only, diffidence would have restrained 

 us from putting to him a twentieth part of the questions we 

 should have desired to ask ; and even then, we should have 

 preferred a more leisurely examination of the plants. It is 

 from my own early experience, and earnest wishes, that I 

 am led to judge of the regrets and wishes of others, and 

 humbly to suggest the remedy. 



I propose to give, in this Magazine, a series of botanical 

 papers, illustrative of the Linnaean system ; in which I 

 shall endeavour to avoid alarming the young student with a 

 crowd of technicalities, at the very outset, unaccompanied by 

 any thing to bribe his attention to them. I will so 

 disperse the husks, that they may not all lie at the top ; but 

 may, at least, allow the observer to perceive that there is 

 grain beneath ; and that for every slight layer of them re- 

 moved, he may obtain a portion of it. The study of botany 

 is much easier than appears to those who have not attempted 

 it. Before the time of Linnaeus, indeed, it was a kind of 

 chaos ; the confusion arising from the contradictions of dif- 

 ferent writers was endless. With no one acknowledged 

 system, every botanist followed his own mode of arrangement; 

 and it was with much difficulty that they made themselves in- 

 telligible to each other. Linnaeus appeared; and not only 

 did he arrange the whole vegetable world systematically, and 

 according to a system, the intrinsic excellence of which, 

 overcoming national jealousy, and the self-love of individuals, 

 obtained its adoption over all Europe; but, by the invention 

 of trivial names, gave a precision to his arrangement which 

 rendered it doubly valuable. Until the middle of the last 

 century, when trivial names were first introduced, the several 

 species were distinguished by long Latin phrases, which, in 

 addition to their inconvenience, were an endless source of 

 confusion and doubt. It was as though, Christian names 

 being unknown, we were to distinguish a family of sisters by 

 personal description ; and instead of designating one as Miss 



