EUCALYPTUS TREES. 127 
researches or microscopic tests; and how, without 
them, photographic art could not have depictured, 
with unerring fidelity, millions of objects, whether of 
landscapes or of the starry sky, whether of the beings 
dear to us or the relics of antiquity, whether enlarging 
the scope of lithography or recording the languages, 
which the flashing of telegraphic electricity sends to 
a dwelling or to an empire? Even the vegetable 
fossils, deep-buried in the earth or in the cleavage of 
rocks, when viewed by the light of phytology, become 
so many letters on the pages of nature’s revelation, 
from which we are to learn the age of strata, or may 
trace the sources of metallic wealth, or by which we 
may be guided to huge remnants of forests of bygone 
ages, stored up for the utilization of this epoch, or 
may comprehend, as far as mortal understanding 
serves us, successive changes in tellurian creation. 
When Ray and, subsequently, Jussieu, framed the 
first groundwork for the ordinal demarcation of 
plants ; when Tournefort, by defining generic limits, 
brought further clearness into the chaos of dawning 
systematie knowledge,'and when Linne gave so hap- 
pily to each plant its second or specific name, but lit- 
tle was it indeed foreseen what a vast influence these 
principles of sound methodic arrangement would ex- 
ercise, not only on the easy recognition of the varied 
forms of vegetable life, but also on the philosophic 
elucidation of their properties and uses, and this for 
all times to come. Many, even at the present day, 
and among them at times those on whom the desti- 
nies of whole states and populations may depend, can 
recognize in phytographic and other scientific labors 
but little else than a mere play-work ; yet, without 
