BENEFICIAL TO iNVALIDS. 127 
such persons once enjoy the pleasure experienced 
by the field naturalist, they would no longer com- 
plain. The hedges which might be seen from their 
windows would furnish subjects for research; and 
they would require no other object than to ascertain 
by what races of the insect world their own neigh- 
bourhood was inhabited, what plants grew in their 
fields, or what birds visited their trees. The 
smallest inclination towards such tastes would beget 
the taste itself: regular and daily exercise would 
powerfully aid the return of health, and pleasurable 
occupation would produce serenity of mind. 
(73.) With all these concomitants, there are few 
invalids, except the infirm, the aged, or the diseased, 
who would long remain so. But even those who 
are physically incapacitated from sharing in the 
active prosecution of natural history, may stili de- 
rive, from its passive pursuit (if we may be allowed 
the term), a never-failing source of rational pleasure, 
if not of mental study. If they cannot collect, 
themselves, they can send others to do so; and if 
foreign productions are required, the commercial 
naturalists of London are continually receiving new 
objects, from which selections may be made. An 
amiable and highly accomplished female friend, 
whose name, on other occasions, we have more than 
once mentioned, during a long and _ protracted 
illness, occupied herself in forming a beautiful 
Hortus Siccus of our native plants. An intelligent 
servant was the acézve collector; who, without any 
knowledge of botany, brought to her mistress all 
such plants of the neighbourhood as were not ab- 
solutely common weeds. Seated in her arm-chair, 
