SHORT ON WESTERN BOTANY. 99 



It is scarcely a century since Botany began to claim any 

 oi the distinctions of a science; at a much later period it was 

 considered as so small a branch of the department of Natu- 

 ral History, that it was generally included in it as a subordi- 

 nate, although always a favourite study. Even now it may be 

 correctly viewed under the same aspect ; but so wonderfully 

 have the branches of this great stock expanded, that Botany 

 may now be said to comprehend many ramifications depen- 

 dent on itself, each of which may occupy and amuse the 

 leisure hours of a long life. Vegetable physiology — the dis- 

 tribution of plants into definite groups, comprehending the 

 principles of classification — descriptive botany, or an exami- 

 nation and description of all the species of which the vege- 

 table kingdom is composed — and even the history of the 

 science, are each of them inquiries of great extent. In de- 

 scriptive botany, instead of the limit which was once sup- 

 posed to circumscribe its objects, instead of ten thousand 

 species which Linnaeus, with all his knowledge and in the 

 height of his enthusiasm, believed would comprehend all the 

 existing forms of vegetable life, we will not say in the language 

 of poetry, that ten thousand times ten thousand are rising up 

 before us, but it is well known that the ascertained species 

 are rapidly approaching to one hundred thousand, and new 

 species, we may safely say, new genera, if not new families, 

 iire annually added to the long catalogue of recorded names. 

 Nor should the perpetual expansion of this circumference 

 deter the lover of Natural History from engaging in its 

 pursuit. It should rather be a gratification and an incentive 

 to him, that his occupation will be interminable — that curi- 

 osity, in itself insatiable, shall be supplied by fountains in 

 themselves exhaustless ; and whilst the conqueror of the 

 World wept that he had no more to do, the student of Nature 

 need never apprehend, that with the most industrious devo- 

 tion of the lonjxest life, he will ever exhaust the sources of 

 his enjoyment. In no pursuit, perhaps, in which man 

 engages, does he enter with so pure and disinterested an 

 enthusiasm, with such devoted and exclusive ardour. There 



