PREFACE. 15 



benefits of natural science in the improvement of many 

 arts, no one doubts. Onr food, our physic, our luxuries 

 are improved by it. By the inquiries of the curious new 

 acquisitions are made in remote countries, and our re- 

 sources of various kinds are augmented. The skill of 

 Linnaeus by the most simple observation, founded how- 

 ever on scientific principles, taught his countrymen to 

 destroy an insect, the Cantharis navaiis, which had cost 

 the Swedish government many thousand pounds a year 

 by its ravages on the timber of one dockyard only. 

 After its metamorphoses, and the season when the fly 

 laid its eggs, were known, all its ravages were stopped 

 by immersing the timber in water during that period. 

 The same great observer, by his botanical knowledge, 

 detected the cause of a dreadful disease among the horn- 

 ed cattle of the north of Lapland, which had previously 

 been thought equally unaccountable and irremediable, 

 and of which he has given an exquisite account in his 

 Lapland tour, as well as under Cicuta virosa, Engl. Bot, 

 t. 479, in his Flora Lapponica. One man in our days, 

 by his scientific skill alone, had given the bread-fruit to 

 the West-Indies, and his country justly honours his 

 character and pursuits. All this is acknowledged. 

 We are no longer in the infancy of science, in which its 

 Utility, not having been proved, might be doubted, nor 

 is it for this that I contend. I would recommend bota« 



