Notices respecting New Books. - 61 
intellect and acquirements which a theoretical competitor 
may have. The truth seems to be, that sensible objects have 
many characters which make so slight an impression on the 
mind, that they do not in passing through it become the sub- 
jects of examination. They are to the eye and to the touch 
what the various flavours are to the taste,—too delicate and 
evanescent to be detected and examined as they pass. Hence 
the nicer qualities of things are long before they are observed, 
and it is not till they are observed with attention that terms are 
invented to express them. Here then is an impediment to 
the progress of knowledge, when no words are capable of ex- 
pressing the character of an object in consequence ofits trans- 
jent nature; and it is an impediment not likely to be overcome 
by the practisers of art, but must be left to such as are habi- 
thated to watch their own impressions and practised in arrest- 
ing them. 
But the reader will begin to say, how does all this lead to a 
notice of the English Flora? We come now to the applica- 
tion of our remarks. It cannot but have struck even the unbo- 
tanical observer, how much more difficult the science of botany 
has become by the vast multiplication of species, and by the 
minute differences which are relied on as sufficient to afford a 
character. Among European plants, indeed, the science has 
been followed up with such analytic severity, that naturalists 
have, in many instances, resorted to the empirical characters 
which experience has pointed out, but which are either untech- 
nical, and hence cannot be employed ina specific description, 
or are of such a nature that the mind, though it acts upon 
the impression, cannot discover it so as to describe it to another. 
Thus they speak of one species differing from another in 
habit, appearance, touch, &c.; by which they oftentimes mean 
that it has some undescribable peculiarities about it, which 
point it out to a practised observer as distinct. ‘The astutest 
botanists of the age are all running into this extreme mi- 
nuteness of distinction; and it can only be explained, we think, 
by attributing it to the cause we have assigned. It is no re- 
flection upon them that there should be this tendency. On the 
contrary, it is to their honour that they have carried the ana- 
lysis as far’as their present technical language will assist them. 
he botany of the old herbalists was, from the want of this lan- 
guage, almost entirely empirical ; and we are fast losing our- 
selves in the same difficulty. In order to be rescued, some new 
Linneus must spring up, who shall be’ possessed of a mind 
for seizing hold of and describing these subtile characters; and 
thus we shall artificially be carried on another stage : but what- 
, ; ever 
