306 HOW TO STUDY NATURAL HISTORY. [xn. 



sciences, which will tell him the properties, and there- 

 fore the value, of the plants, the animals, the minerals, 

 the climates with which he meets ? True home- 

 learnt natural history will not altogether teach him 

 about these things, because most of them must 

 needs be new : but it will teach him to compare and 

 classify them as he finds them, and so by analogy with 

 things already known to him, to discover their intrinsic 

 worth. 



For natural history stands to man's power over 

 Nature, that is, to his power of being useful to himself 

 and to mankind, in the same relation as do geography, 

 grammar, arithmetic, geometry, political economy ; 

 none of them, perhaps, bearing directly on his future 

 business in life; but all training his mind for his 

 business, all giving him the rudiments of laws which he 

 will hereafter work out and apply to his profession. 

 And even at home, be sure that such studies will bear 

 fruit in after life. The productive wealth of England 

 is not exhausted, doubt it not ; our grandchildren may 

 find treasures in this our noble island of which we 

 never dreamed, even as we have found things of which 

 our forefathers dreamed not. Recollect always that a 

 great market town like this is not merely a commercial 

 centre ; not perhaps even a commercial centre at all : 

 but that she is an agricultural centre, and one of the 

 most important in England ; that the increase of 

 science here will be sure more or less to extend itself 

 to the neighbourhood : and then lay to heart this one 

 fact. A friend of mine, and one whom I am proud to 

 call my friend, succeeding to an estate, thought good 

 to cultivate it himself. And being a man of common 

 sense, he thought good to know something of what 



