January Memoranda. 4 1 



soon draw studies of detached leaves very beautifully, 

 and then he is likely to fall into a sort of mechanical 

 routine which is the indolence of the industrious in all 

 the handicraft trades. The only kind of study atr all 

 resembling this, which may be permitted to a real artist, 

 is work done on the principles of Jules Jacquemart in 

 his etchings of flowers. There you have leaf-drawing 

 certainly, and careful copying of petals and calices, yet 

 always subordinated to the effect of a bouquet as a 

 mass. 



Before quitting the subject of leaf-drawing let me 

 add, that careful memoranda of leaves and other objects 

 may often be done with great advantage by those who 

 are not troubled with any artistic ambition. They aid 

 the memory wonderfully, and enable it to retain truths 

 of form and color with an accuracy that may be of the 

 greatest advantage in many studies and occupations. 

 Much mechanical drawing is bad, because the draughts- 

 man has looked only to those characteristics of plants 

 which may be technically described in scientific language : 

 these things he sees, but he fails to see the beauty of 

 natural curvature even in those very forms where it is 

 most conspicuous. Now it would be perfectly possible, 

 and a worthy object of ambition to any student who 

 really loved Nature in a catholic and comprehensive way, 

 to preserve the strictest botanical truth in the delineation 

 of plants, and yet add to it the true loveliness of their 

 forms, the exquisite changes of curve and surface which 

 the accidents of perspective are incessantly producing. 

 Such an enterprise might not be directly remunerative 



