AS RELATED TO WEALTH. 119 



every department of this division of science. " All 

 men will encourage those departments which will 

 bring money at once. But we see a very dif- 

 ferent thing is needed: it is to make every plant, 

 and bird, and insect, every object of Natural 

 History, a subject of thought that the field may be 

 a place of intellectual as well as of bodily activity. 

 This may be thought impossible, but it is not. "We 

 here see the need of certain kinds of information 

 which some undervalue. When our agricultural 

 reports give the Natural History of an insect, the 

 picture of a bird, or a snake, a grass, or a sedge, it 

 is often a better work than reports on wheat or 

 stock, however valuable they may be. These 

 objects, from the forest and the river, turn the 

 thoughts into a new channel, and waken powers 

 of observation, that, but for them, might ever have 

 remained dormant. Much work of this kind done 

 by our national and state governments, that has 

 been hastily, though undoubtedly honestly con- 

 demned, has its value. What use of describing 

 fossil shells, in boundary surveys ? grasses and birds 

 in astronomical expeditions, or corals in the coast 



