PREFACE. Vll 



Author could give. He has been more par- 

 ticularly desirous to introduce cheerful (but 

 at the same time, he trusts, inoffensive) anec- 

 dote, with a hope of leading by an agreeable 

 road to a knowledge of Plants, and love of 

 Natural Philosophy : and more particularly 

 to render his work attractive to the younger 

 part of his readers, whom he intreats not to 

 abandon Virgil, when they bid adieu to their 

 tutors, but to remember those lines of his 

 Georgics : 



" Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 

 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 

 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari ! 

 Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes, 

 Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores! 



Thus translated by Dryden ; 



" Happy the man, who, studying Nature's laws, 

 Through known effects, can trace the secret cause, 

 His mind possessing in a quiet state, 

 Fearless of fortune, and resign'd to fate. 

 And happy too is he who decks the bowers 

 Of Sylvans, and adores the rural powers." 



