ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 161 



The young student cannot be supposed to have sufficient knowledge 

 to demonstrate the affinities of the objects he may discover, but he ought 

 to be able to observe characters instructedly in such a way that his notes 

 may be available to others. Thus, he ought to be able, by the use of the 

 exact language of Zoology or Botany, to give a description intelligible to 

 any naturalist whose opinion he may afterwards consult Such a de- 

 scription presupposes a knowledge of general structure— of comparative 

 anatomy in Zoology, of organography in Botany — such as can only be 

 acquired by careful study. Therefore, at the very beginning of his ca- 

 reer, and before he can render his discovery of new species creditable to 

 himself, the student must have acquired by study, either in the lecture- 

 room or the field, a considerable amount of information. 



And here I would observe, that this particular kind of preliminary 

 knowledge, though attempted to be detailed in books, cannot be really 

 learned, though it may be crammed, from books alone, or without the 

 patient use of the knife or dissecting- needle, verifying on actual organ- 

 isms the particular structures described in books. To get a useful idea 

 of the mutual relations of the parts of any plant or animal, you must have 

 seen a specimen, and examined it carefully ; otherwise you have only a 

 dreamy notion, such as one has of an Afreet or a Griffin, or any other 

 creature of romance or of heraldry. The want of preliminary training in 

 the use of the exact language of Zoology and Botany is a chief cause why 

 so little is added by ordinary travellers to the general stock of our 

 science. Unless the traveller actually brings home specimens of the 

 curious or useful plants, or animals, he writes about, it is in most cases 

 impossible to divine of what he is speaking. Dr. Livingstone mentions 

 many valuable plants, met with in his great expedition, in such loose 

 terms that none of them can be recognised but those few of which he 

 contrived to bring home specimens, which were submitted to a botanist 

 for examination. Messrs. Hue and Gabet, the enterprising explorers in 

 Thibet, who passed over a vast tract of country previously untrodden by 

 Europeans, from their profound ignorance of natural histoiy or its termi- 

 nology, have contributed nothing to our knowledge of the Thibetan 

 Fauna and Flora, save vague shadowy pictures, such as that of " the 

 tree of a thousand images." And so of many other travellers; but not 

 so of Bruce, of Burchell, or of Humboldt, and more recently of Hooker. 

 When these travellers speak of plant or animal, they give us either its 



