290 DANGER OF ANALOGIES. 



or varieties of the cabbage tribe are sufficient to 

 puzzle a novice ; and after a while the wild plants 

 from which we have bred the Camellia Japonica and 

 the Dahlia will not be a matter to be settled at a 



fiance. It is not very long since the wild roses of 

 cotland were bred double and so deep-coloured as 

 some of them are ; and yet, to people that have some 

 little knowledge of plants, their relations to the ones 

 still wild are, even now, fully more matters of tes- 

 timony than of ocular proof. 



Now, if people have been able to cultivate ani- 

 mals into greater size and strength and beauty, and 

 also to make them have better flesh and finer wool ; 

 if they have been able to improve by culture the 

 beauty of flowers, and the nourishing qualities of 

 all manner of esculent roots, stems, leaves, and 

 fruits, it would be passing strange if their culture 

 could do nothing for an oak-tree, but make it more 

 worthless timber. If all the earth were given to 

 man for improvement, and he had improved much 

 of it as he actually has done, it would be a perfect 

 anomaly, if timber, which is so very useful, should 

 be the single article on which he could not lay his 

 hand of culture without doing it an injury. It is 

 impossible to believe that such an anomaly can exist 

 in nature ; and therefore the only way is to cate- 

 chise the man who makes the attempt ; and if he 

 does not understand what he is doing, send him back 

 to nature to inform himself as to what he should do. 



There is a custom, and a very inveterate custom, 

 which we have, and that is the custom of general- 

 izing analogies. If there be a way in which one 

 thing answers very well with us, we are apt to think 

 that same way will do as well in all other things, 

 even though the things are, in their nature, quite 

 different. We go about to persuade ourselves that 

 the way of doing one thing is the way of doing every 

 thing, just as Lord Peter, in Swift's " Tale of a Tub," 

 went about to persuade his two brothers, Martin and 



