44 PROSERPINA. 



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 accu- 

 rately, 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 

 enable 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 difficult language, in order to be able to give an account 

 of what in all probability he will never see. 



