XU PREFACE. 



the natural bodies around us, it must be expect- 

 ed from those who discriminate their kinds and 

 study their properties. Of the benefits of natu- 

 ral science in the improvement of many arts, 

 no one doubts. Our food, our physic, our lux- 

 uries are improved by it. By the inquiries of 

 the curious, new acquisitions are made in re- 

 mote countries, and our resources of various 

 kinds are augmented. The skill of Linnaeus by 

 the most simple observation, founded however 

 on scientific principles, taught his countrymen 

 to destroy an insect, the Cantharis navalis^ 

 which had cost the Swedish government many 

 thousand pounds a year by its ravages on the 

 timber of one dockyard only. After its meta- 

 morphoses, 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 bo- 

 tanical knowledge, detected the cause of a 

 dreadful disease among the horned cattle of the 

 north of Lapland, which had previously been 

 thought equally unaccountable and irremedi- 

 able, 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 



