112 CHAPTER XV. 



it requires a certain effort to examine and compare : 

 it is much easier in botany, as in other subjects, to 

 take things for granted. Here is a great broad-leaved 

 grass six or eight feet high ; it is not a Bamboo, nor 

 yet an Arundo, ergo it is an Indian Corn. This kind 

 of reasoning is common enough, even with persons 

 who know their " Barbara Celarent." 



The confusion which sometimes falls upon a 

 botanist is chronic among the general public. Plants 

 are confounded with one another which do not seem 

 to have anything whatever in common. How much 

 those people lose to whom all vegetation seems the 

 same, who neither know nor care what natural order 

 this or that flower belongs to ! Their outlook must 

 be that of an ant or a bee. The sense of colour exists, 

 and to a certain extent the sense of form ; they can 

 distinguish a blue flower from a red one, or a bell- 

 shaped from a star-like blossom. Like the bee, they 

 may even prefer a blue flower to a vulgar yellow one. 

 Nevertheless they miss all the interest and almost all 

 the beauty of the changing year. Nature to them is 

 but a vast monotony. 



The botanist knows nothing of monotony : no 

 climate and no season can be dull to him. Place 

 him 



"Pigris ubi nulla campis arbor sestiva recreatur aura," 



he will yet find some object of interest ; an anemo- 

 philous cabbage at Kerguelen, .or a rolling Nostoc, or 

 at the worst he will be able to study the Lichen-gonidia 

 question. If his lot be cast 



" Sub curru nimiuni propinqui soils," 



he will recognise some of the strange forms of 



