II. THE ROOT. 3 ( J 



sume, in giving this advice, that yon wish to pursue the 

 science of botany as your chief study ; I have only broken 

 moments for it, snatched from my chief occupations, and 

 I have done nothing myself of all this I tell you to do. 

 'But so far as you can work in this manner, even if you 

 only ascertain the history of one plant, so that you know 

 that accurately, you will have helped to lay the foundation 

 of a true science of botany, from which the mass of useless 

 nomenclature,* now mistaken for science, will fall away, 

 as the husk of a poppy falls from the bursting flower. 



* The only use of a great part of our existing nomenclature is to en- 

 able one botanist to describe to another a plant which the other has not 

 seen. When the science becomes approximately perfect, all known 

 plants will be properly figured, so that nobody need describe them ; and 

 unknown plants be so rare that nobody will care to learn a new and diffi- 

 cult language, in order to be able to give an account 3f what in all prob- 

 ability he will never see. 



