THE MAGAZINE 



HORTICULTURE 



JULY, 1842. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. On the Study of JSTatural History; being extracts 

 from an Jlddress delivnrcd before the members of the Harvard 

 J^atural History Society at Cambridge. By J. L. Rus- 

 sell, A. M., Prof, of Botany, Stc, to the IMassachusetis 

 Horticultural Society. 



[In our last number we took occasion to correct a wrong 

 impression under which we labored, in reference to the ex- 

 ertions of our excellent friend, Dr. T. W. Harris. Since 

 then we have had put at our disposal the MS. of the Anni- 

 versary Address delivered before the members of the Har- 

 vard Natural Histoiy Society, May 5, 1842, by our corres- 

 pondent Prof. John Lewis Russell; from which we present 

 to our readers the following extracts.] 



"I have thus gone over the ground of pursuit in natural his- 

 tory in this broud view, and taken so extensive a sense of its 

 merits as a subject of study, because it seems to me most 

 conducive to the interests of your own Society. I by no 

 means wish to depreciate the value of a more particular atten- 

 tion to single departments of research: for without such in- 

 stances among the most distinguished naturalists, the cause of 

 natural history would have been retarded. There can be but 

 little danger, too, of any want of a direction to a single favor- 

 ite subject, where there is a decided inclination for that branch 

 of investigation. But where, as is too often the case of ne- 

 cessity, and more especially in societies intended the rather 

 to foster a taste for natural history than to pursue it in its mi- 

 nuter details, there do not exist the means, the time, or the 

 materials, it were better to regard Nature as a great whole, 



VOL. VIII. — NO. VII. 31 



