OF SELBORNE. 215 



LETTER XL. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, June 2, 1778. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a 

 pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, 

 without improving the mind or advancing any real know- 

 ledge : and where the science is carried no farther than a 

 mere systematic classification, the charge is but too true. 

 But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion 

 should be by no means content with a list of names; he 

 should study plants philosophically, should investigate the 

 laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of 

 efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation ; and graft 

 the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phyto- 

 logist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; 

 without system the field of Nature would be a pathless 

 wilderness: but system should be subservient to, not the main 

 object of, pursuit. 



Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention ; and in itself 

 is of the utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of 

 many of the greatest comforts and elegancies of life. To 

 plants we owe timber, bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, 

 cotton, &c. what not only strengthens our hearts, and exhila- 

 rates our spirits, but what secures from inclemencies of 

 weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state of 

 nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation : in 

 middle climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal 

 food with the produce of the field and garden : and it is 

 towards the polar extremes only that, like his kindred bears 

 and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone, and is driven, 

 to what hunger has never been known to compel the very 

 beasts, to prey on his own species." 



u See the late Voyages to the South-seas. 



