224 WANT OF OBSERVATION. 



once in every five years, when he finds as much as 

 repays his labour. Those hard and apparently use- 

 less productions of the rocks are* not only useful, as 

 may be seen from the two instances that have been 

 mentioned, and of which there would, no doubt, be 

 many more instances, if those who are much in the 

 wild places where lichens are most abundant would 

 look at what is around them, and find out what it is 

 good for ; but imagining- that a place must be barren 

 in every respect, because it is barren in those pro- 

 ductions which abound in places of quite a different 

 character, is a folly by means of which we are left 

 without much useful information with regard to na- 

 ture, of which we might otherwise be in possession, 

 and deprived of the use of many things in the arts 

 of which we might otherwise be in the enjoyment. 

 That folly is as absurd as it is mischievous. No man 

 would think of taking hounds to sea in order to 

 course game, or propose going to the moors with 

 boats and harpoons, or white fish-lines. Now, 

 though in many cases the absurdity is not so striking 

 as it is in these, yet so far as it goes, it is just as 

 absurd. And it is far more dangerous ; for, just as at 

 sea there is more to be dreaded from the sunken 

 rock than from that which stands high and gives 

 warning, so in the case of error, there is ever the 

 more peril from that which is the more concealed, 

 or has the nearer resemblance to truth. 



We find that very frequently the case in matters 

 connected with the'study of nature more especially 

 those parts of nature which do not appear to bear 

 immediately upon the common concerns of food and 

 clothing. In those very lichens, which we have 

 mentioned as being useful in dying, it is not the 

 people who live where they grow that gather them, 

 but strangers who find it their interest to go there 

 in the season : so also it is not very long since the 

 people of Britain depended mainly upon the Dutch 



