Dr Johnston's Flora of Berwick upon Tweed. 357 



it some facts illustrative of the geographical distribution of our native 

 plants, and of the influence which particular situations exert in producing 

 changes in their a])pearances. 



^' To relieve, however, the dryness of mere descriptive detail, and to point 

 out the manner in which this study may be made most conducive to our 

 amusement, if not to our instruction, various particulars have been adtled 

 relative to the uses of our plants in agriculture, in the arts, and in medi- 

 cine. And, in the Flora of a river so celebrated as the Tweed in pastoral 

 poetry, and * where flowers of fairy blow,' it seemed allowable to notice, 

 at greater length than is usual in works of science, the purposes to which 

 superstition has applied them in former times, and the illustrations which 

 they have afforded to the poets of our own day. A few facts relative to 

 the physiology of vegetable life have been also given ; but of what I had 

 collected by far the greater portion has been cancelled, lest our work 

 should have exceeded its proper limits. I cannot, however, but strongly 

 recommend to the young botanist the attentive observation of such pheno- 

 mena ; it will add greatly to the pleasure of the walks which he must 

 take in search of the objects of his study, and will remove from him the 

 reproach which has sometimes been cast upon us, of being mere collectors 

 of vegetable curiosities, of which we seemed anxious to know nothing be- 

 yond the barbarous name that some dull systematist may have given them. 

 I, indeed, cannot praise the botanist, who has no other object in his ex- 

 cursions than to add a specimen to his herbarium, and who confines his 

 examination of it to those characters by which he ascertains its name in 

 the system. I know well that such investigations are not void of interest, 

 — it is akin to that which the mathematician feels in the solution of a 

 problem, — but botany has other pleasures. '^ 



" There is not a flower which blows but has some beauty only unveiled 

 to the minute inquirer, — some peculiarity in structure fitting it for its des- 

 tined place and purpose, and yet not patent to a casual glance. Many are 

 full of remembrances and associations, in which it is good for us to indulge. 

 To the student ' a yellow primrose on the brim,' should be something 

 more than a yellow primrose. He should, to borrow the words of the 

 author of the 'Sketch Book,* be continually coming upon some little do- 

 cument of poetry in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the 

 primrose, or some other simple object that has received a supernatural 

 value from the muse. And, as his pursuit leads him into the most wild and 

 beautiful scenes of nature, so his knowledge enables him to enjoy them 

 with a higher relish than others. They are full of his * familiar friends, 

 with whom he holds a kind of intellectual communion ; he can analyze 

 the landscape, and assign to every individual its share in the general effect.' 

 The reader will see from this quotation, that Dr Johnston is alive to all 

 those fine associations, which the study of nature never fails to excite in 

 an accomplished and well constituted mind. In every part of his work this 

 tone of mind is apparent, and we can safely assert, t)iat we know of no si- 

 milar botanical work, in which the necessary dryness and formality of tech- 

 nological description, is so agreeably enlivened by the most appropriate quo-. 



