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 still 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 active 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, 



