22 WHAT WE FOUND. 
appears truly wild at the foot of the hedge between Bird-in-hand 
and West Wycombe station. Let none, therefore, imagine that 
they need go far afield to increase their botanical lore: they will 
learn more from the careful examination of the plants on a single 
acre of ground, than they will by scampering hastily over 
miles of country in search of rarities. To such of our Wycombe 
friends as desire to commence studying our Wild Flowers for 
themselves, we would say—Go to Hollow Lane at least once a 
week for a year; bring home specimens of every plant, common 
or rare, which you may perceive: count them up, study them, 
watch them expand, you cannot fail to find a never-ending source 
of pleasure and amusement which will supply you with food for 
reflection for many days. And if, in any of your rambles, you 
find a rare plant, take no more of it than is necessary for your 
purpose, leaving the rest for any one else who may want it, re- 
membering that an Exterminator is unworthy the name of a 
Botanist. 
You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to 
Nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; 
and nobody knows. Wise men are afraid to say that there is 
anything contrary to Nature, except what is contrary to mathe- 
matical truth; for two and two cannot make five, and two 
straight lines cannot join twice, and a part cannot be as great as 
the whole, and so on (at least, so it seems at present): but the 
wiser men are, the less they talk about ‘‘cannot.”’ There are 
dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should 
certainly have said were contrary to Nature, if we did not see 
them going on under our eyes all day long. If people had never 
seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite different 
shape from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, 
to grow into fresh trees, they would have said, ‘The thing can- 
not be; it is contrary to nature.” And they would have been 
quite as right in saying so, as in saying that most other things 
cannot be.—Rey. C. Kinestey.—‘ Water Babies.” 
