Private Museums. 1 1 



are forgotten, every man is an equal and a brother. Not 

 the least useful end either, that flows from culture of love 

 of the country, and particularly of some science having 

 reference to natural objects, is the perennial employment 

 it supplies for leisure hours at home. Half the mischief 

 that boys commit comes of their having no intelligent 

 and useful occupation for their playtime. As large a 

 portion of the lax morality of their elders may be referred 

 to the same cause. A naturalist never has any idle 

 moments; if he be not at work in the country, he is busy 

 with his curiosities indoors. Little private collections of 

 natural objects, such as dried plants, insects, fossils, or 

 shells, are always valuable, and always pretty, and a per- 

 petual fund of interest and amusement. To gather 

 together such things is not only highly instructive, 

 and an agreeable pursuit, through the prolonged and 

 intelligent observation which it demands; it is useful 

 also as feeding the pleasure of possession a noble and 

 worthy one when well directed; and it has the yet higher 

 recommendation of providing a diary and immortal 

 record of past pleasures. A volume of dried plants, 

 gathered on occasions of memorable enjoyment, becomes 

 in a few years inexpressibly precious, an aid to memory, 

 and thus to the perpetuity of those enjoyments, which 

 even pictures give less perfectly, for here we have the 

 very things themselves that were handled and looked at 

 during those bright and fleeting moments. Such a 

 volume of memorial-plants now lies on the table before 

 us, spreading before the mind the souvenirs of forty 



