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nor can we say that we think it what it ought to have been ; still it is 

 a step, and an important one, in the right direction — that of popular- 

 izing one of the most pleasing branches of Natural History. We are 

 especially thankful to Schleiden for the following protest against cer- 

 tain insane nothings which have already been exposed in these pages. 

 He says : — 



" True to my own convictions, I have kept free from all the pratings 

 of the physio-philosophers of the Schelling school, and I am firmly 

 persuaded that science has no need of these fopperies to make it ap- 

 pear interesting to the uninitiated. Humboldt in his 'Views of Nature,' 

 Dove in his masterly 'Lectures on the Climate of Berlin,' have proved 

 that science may really appear lovely and captivating, without adorn- 

 ing herself with the false tinsel of those conscious or unconscious 

 falsehoods, which would substitute poetry for thought, imagination for 

 knowledge, or dreams for truths. I have endeavoured to adorn these 

 essays with as many graces as my imperfect aesthetic culture enabled 

 me to impart, but that it has not been my intention to enter the lists 

 with those masters of language, need scarcely be mentioned. I be- 

 lieve, however, that if men of science would more often seek to intro- 

 duce truth into society, in fair attire, the path of that intolerable, 

 mystical and pretentious, empty chattering, would be more effectually 

 arrested than by any rational argumentation against it." — p. 2. 



From a casual glance at its contents, Schleiden's book would at 

 first sight appear, like the Irishman's letter, to treat " de omnibus re- 

 bus et quibusdam aliis" many of the said things seeming to bear 

 about as much relation to Botany as to the French Revolution. For 

 example, we have one lecture upon ' The Eye and the Microscope,' 

 another ' About the Weather,' and two in reply to the question ' What 

 does Man live upon ? ' This diversity of subjects, however, upon 

 further acquaintance with his pages, is seen to be only a part of the 

 author's plan, and, in connexion with the more purely botanical lec- 

 tures, it is skilfully rendered subservient to the aim declared in the 

 following extract : — 



" My chief aim was, in fact, the satisfaction of what may be called 

 a class-vanity. A large proportion of the uninitiated, even among the 

 educated classes, are still in the habit of regarding the botanist as a 

 dealer in barbarous Latin names, a man who plucks flowers, names 

 them, dries and wraps them up in paper, and whose whole wisdom is 

 expended in the determination and classification of this ingeniously 

 collected hay. This portrait of the botanist was, alas ! once true, 

 but it pains me to observe, that now, when it bears resemblance to so 



