230 



is not dry scientific teaching, but a lively demonstration of the more 

 important points. In the following essays, therefore, the division into 

 these four branches can only be adopted to a limited extent, and a freer 

 treatment becomes necessary from the abundance of material which 

 continually allures us to turn aside from our path, to gather here and 

 there a bright or fragrant flower ; or the companionship in which we 

 wander through the land of science, induces us oftentimes to leave the 

 straight but dusty and fatiguing high road, now to pursue our course 

 through lanes which wind among pleasant meadows, now to explore 

 a shady forest path." — p. 3. 



Plants being built up of exceedingly minute cells or vesicles, of 

 various forms and as varied contents, it is evident that a thorough ex- 

 amination of their internal structure should precede all other conside- 

 rations. It is to a careful investigation of the minute organized con- 

 stituents of plants that we owe the immense advances in Botany as a 

 science, which have so completely distanced the labours of its early 

 cultivators, whose performances were the more valuable in proportion 

 as they employed in their researches that instrument to the improve- 

 ments in the construction and mode of using which modern naturalists 

 owe much of their pre-eminence. Thus we see that a preliminary 

 chapter on the nrici'oscope, in connexion with the eye as the organ of 

 vision, is perfectly relevant to the more immediate subject of the 

 succeeding lectures. Of sight, the author well observes, that " it is 

 the sense which originally introduces and unceasingly expands our 

 whole knowledge of the corporeal world, and we may, therefore, with 

 great propriety, call it the Sense of the Naturalist ; " for, in the words 

 of Seneca, appropriately used as the motto to this lecture, 



" Oculus ad vitam nihil facit, ad vitam beatam nihil magis." 



The second lecture relates to " The Internal Structure of Plants." 

 And here, contrasting the comparatively trifling results of the most 

 boasted labours of man, effected with so much toil and such exten- 

 sive preparation of material and machinery — contrasting these with 

 the stupendous and infinitely varied works of Nature, produced by 

 the simplest causes and resulting from numerous combinations of the 

 simplest means; the author remarks that "we need not ascend to the 

 stars to recognize how little Nature requires to the unfolding of won- 

 ders :" and continues, — 



"Let us tarry a moment with the vegetable world. From the slen- 

 der palm, waving its elegant crown in the refreshing breezes, high 



