314 VEGETABLES 



monuments which are in progress in our own coun- 

 try ; and as these must have an effect upon every 

 operation of art which is in any way connected with 

 plants or animals, or to which the state of the at- 

 mosphere has any relation, we must be, in so far, 

 at the mercy of guesses in the conducting of these. 

 That has passed, and we cannot help it ; but it ought 

 to be a warning to us, and induce us to examine the 

 connexion and watch the succession of every thing 

 we see. 



The vegetable tribes are perhaps the best subjects 

 of observation for those who make an amusement 

 rather than a business of observing. The weather 

 is a wayward thing, and we want many of the ele- 

 ments which would be necessary to form the little 

 that we do know about it into a science. Animals, 

 too, in their wild or natural state, the only state in 

 which they are of much value to a genuine observer 

 of nature, are, except in very few species, seen only 

 by snatches ; and very much of what is said anc 

 written about them is inference, and not fact. Ii 

 many cases, too, it is very imperfect inference, fa 

 it is contradicted by the fact, whenever that is ob 

 served. The error consists in attempting to foum 

 a fact upon an inference, instead of drawing an 

 inference from a fact, which is about as absurd a 

 if we were to attempt to melt snow by cold, or freeze 

 water by heat. 



But in the case of vegetables, we can, in the ma 

 jority of instances, observe the entire succession 

 from embryo to embryo, not only in the course of 

 a lifetime, but in the course of one year ; and where 

 we cannot do that with the individual, we can do 

 what conduces even more to our information. In mos 

 species of plants the successions follow each other 

 so closely that, unless in some of the animals which 

 appear only for very short periods of the season 

 we can have all the stages of growth before us a 

 once, from the first germinations of the seed to the 



