^ 



30 REMARKABLE PLANTS FOUND GROWING 



Analyst. I would only here remark that the immensely improved 

 elementary education advocated in the foregoing pages will call 

 teachers of very superior qualifications into that field of labour, and 

 elevate the character of that most useful class of men to the rank it 

 ought to holdj namely, that of a fourth learned profession. It is 

 despised now, because, from its intellectual poverty, it is not worthy 

 of a higher estimation. 



I have thus sketched, much more briefly than the important sub- 

 ject merits, a system of elementary education. A plan for 

 its realization — in the establishment of a minister of public instruc- 

 tion, a board of commissioners, subordinate boards, normal schools, 

 and an infant and juvenile school in every parish of the empire — 

 may yet afford matter for much future discussion. 



[Our thanks are due to our talented correspondent for the able and im- 

 partial manner in which he has treated the important subject of the above 

 paper. Were views such as these generally admitted, and universally prac- 

 tised, the benefit to future ages would be incalculable. We feel convinced, 

 with Mr. Simpson, that schools, on however good a general plan, must fail 

 in their objects unless the teacher has a thorough knowledge of human na- 

 ture — in other words, unless he be a good phrenologist. His learning may 

 be great, his intentions good, but still he may fail as an instructor ; and we 

 hold that schools and instructors will be alike useless and pernicious as long 

 as any one set of faculties is cultivated to the partial or entire exclusion of 

 all others. In fine, to be aware what are the primitive faculties that belong 

 to man, and hence to know what studies are fitted for him, Phrenology 

 must be our guide, our sure and never-failing instructor. — Eds.] 



REMARKABLE PLANTS FOUND GROWING in the 

 VICINITY OF BIRMINGHAM in the year 183?. 



** Qualis apes sestate nova per florea rura 

 Exercet sub sole labor."— Virg., jEtieid, lib. i., 430. 



As one of the objects of the Analyst is to register and make 

 known to the public the personal observations of individuals in the 

 various branches of Natural History, perhaps a few notices of the 

 habitats of some of the less common of our native plants found 

 growing, during the year 1836, in the neighbourhood of Birming- 



