38 January — Botany and Art, 



a description slightly caricatured, yet probably drawn 

 from some living instance, and accurate in the main : 

 ' II s'en va herboriser par champs, s'assure que tel vege- 

 table a les feuilles pointues ou decoupees de telle faeon, 

 que telle fleurette a une telle corolle et tant de petales ; 

 qu'il y a d'ailleurs, dans la nature des rouges violents, 

 des verts crus, des jaunes impitoyables, beaucoup de 

 violet,' &c. Well, this may be true with reference to 

 some painters of that young realist school which was 

 flourishing in England when M. Deschanel wrote his 

 book, and he may have met with some English artists 

 who were also botanists ; but the harm is not in the 

 study of plants, it is in the forgetfulness of large relations 

 to which this minute observation of Nature has occasion- 

 ally led those who were addicted to it. It is well to 

 know the plants with a loving familiarity that observes 

 the minutest detail, but the great harmonies of natural 

 effect and color concern the landscape-painter more 

 closely. Here, for example, is an effect which, if painted 

 in a masterly manner, with sufficient taste and feeling, 

 would reward the labor of an artist : One day in Jan- 

 uary I was riding in the forest, where the ground is 

 closely planted with young oaks, and the sun was setting 

 behind them. The material was almost monotonous in 

 its simplicity, — one species of tree, and a sunset with 

 no elaboration of cloud-form, but merely a suffusion of 

 yellow light in a sky heavily charged with vapor. The 

 trunks of the trees were all gray, the sun-gold pale 

 yellow ; and as the light was well concentrated, and 

 brilliantly scatteied to right and left, but always from 



