60 Professor Burnett’s 
ever actively preparing and purveying sugar, starch, 
gluten, gum, cotton, wood, flax, hemp, and many other 
substances, with an alacrity, a perseverance, and a cer- 
tainty which would be truly astonishing, were we not sur- 
rounded by such natural miracles, and did we not live ina 
world of wonders. Many of these works will doubtless ever 
remain inimitable by human art; to bounteous nature we 
must ever be indebted for her most precious gifts. We 
never can hope to penetrate the arcana of all her mysteries, 
although in some few particulars we can trace her course, 
and imitate her productions. Still, as we have already much 
lightened human labour by the substitution of brute 
strength, and superseded the use of many brutes by the 
adaptation of machinery, thus reclaiming much soil from the 
pasturage of cattle for the growth of food for man, and, by 
the introduction of steam and rail-roads, we shall reclaim much 
more; so it isnot improbable that much of the labour of tilling 
the ground for the growth of human food may hereafter 
be avoided, by the immediate production of many substances 
from their elements, instead of deriving them intermediately 
through the culture of plants; or, at any rate, it is not im- 
probable that we may so far advance in science and in art 
as to be enabled to convert the less into the more useful; the 
more into the less abundant: as wood into starch, worn-out 
flax, i. e. old linen, into sugar, and so on; and thus, if it 
were not for placing an important subject in rather a ludicrous 
point of view, we (in like manner as spiders and some other 
insects are said to devour their exuvial skins,) might hope 
to be enabled, after having worn out our clothes, to feed 
upon them, and to dine off as well as on our tables. 
There is but one topic more with which at present I will 
intrude on your attention, but it is one which, as it most 
especially relates to the duties of the professor of botany, I 
should be inexcusable to let pass unnoticed. 
Much of the obscurity attendant on the history of the 
effects of drugs is doubtless attributable to the careless 
manner in which plants have too commonly been collected and 
preserved, but often, still more to the errors which the igno- 
rant and the frauds which the unprincipled commit. Hence, 
itis necessary that a continual check should be kept by the 
eye of science over the gatherers and venders of medicinal 
herbs. How often do we find briony root substituted for 
calomba, mullein leaves for foxglove, horn-beam for hops, 
marigold petals for saffron, cow parsley for hemlock, &c. 
Into one of our largest drug factories there once was brought 
a large quantity of Ginanthe crocata, which, had not a botanic 
