1868.] HOOKER — ON FORESTRY. 453 



needs fearlessly concede to modern science all that is claimed for 

 it, to this extent, that in its dealings with the great physical 

 powers or elementary forces which pervade and govern the 

 material world, it has been led or even forced into a bolder form 

 and method of inquiry, — that inductions of a higher class have 

 been reached, and generalizations attained, going far beyond those 

 subordinate laws in which science was formerly satisfied to rest, — 

 that the precision and refinements of modern experimental research 

 strikingly distinguish it from that of any anterior time, — 

 that physical researches generally in our own day have a larger 

 scope and more connected aim, experiment being no longer tenta- 

 tive merely, but suggested by views which stretch beyond the 

 immediate result, and hold in constant prospect those general laws 

 which work in the universe at large. But, let it be ever remem- 

 bered that there is also exhibited in our own day, a marked 

 fondness for what is new and difficult and unintelligible in 

 philosophy, — a spirit that takes pleasure in stigmatizing as hin- 

 drances to truth in physical science, all such opinions as are 

 fostered by ancient and popular belief, including those which 

 assume Scriptural authority for their foundation. In their too 

 hot zeal against dogmatical authority, we find some falling into 

 the opposite rashness of lending their authority and favour to 

 hasty and partial experimental deductions, or to doctrines still in 

 their infancy, and checked or controverted by opposite opinions of 

 equal weight. Let, then, the dangerous effects of gratifying too 

 prevalent a taste for transcendental inquiries in science be duly 

 marked and carefully avoided, regarding it as cause for gratitude 

 and felicitation that they are corrected by the cotemporaneous 

 activity of those philosophers who make experiment and strict 

 deduction the sole measure and guides of their progress. 



ON SEEDS AND SAPLINGS OF FOREST TREES. 



By Dr. J. D. Hooker, F. R. S., etc.* 



Forestry, a subject so utterly neglected in this country, 

 that we are forced to send all candidates for forest appointments 

 in India, to France or Germany for instruction both in theory and 



* One of the Reports on the Paris Exhibition, 



Yol. III. C No. 6. 



