28 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



Of folk-lore and medicinal use and history and associa- 

 tions here you have hints. The bottom of the sack is not 

 yet ; there are the monographs, years of study expended 

 upon one species of plant growing in one locality, perhaps ; 

 some made up into thick books and some into broad 

 quarto pamphlets, with most beautiful plates, that, if 

 you were to see them, would tempt you to cut them out 

 and steal them, all sunk and lost like dead ships under 

 the sand : piles of monographs. There are warehouses 

 in London that are choked to the beams of the roof 

 with them, and every fresh exploration furnishes another 

 shelf-load. The source of the Nile was unknown a very 

 few years ago, and now, I have no doubt, there are 

 dozens of monographs on the flowers that flourish there. 

 Indeed, there is not a thing that grows that may not 

 furnish a monograph. The author spends perhaps 

 twenty years in collecting his material, during which 

 time he must of course come across a great variety of 

 amusing information, and then he spends another ten 

 years writing out a fair copy of his labours. Then 

 he thinks it does not quite do in that form, so he snips a 

 paragraph out of the beginning and puts it at the end ; 

 next he shifts some more matter from the middle to the 

 preface ; then he thinks it over. It seems to him that 

 it is too big, it wants condensation. The scientific world 

 will say he has made too much of it ; it ought to read 

 very slight, and present the facts while concealing the 

 labour. So he sets about removing the superfluous 

 leaves out all the personal observations, and all the little 

 adventures he has met with in his investigations ; and 

 so, having got it down to the dry bones and stones thereof, 

 and omitted all the mortar that stuck them together, 

 he sends for the engraver, and the next three years are 

 occupied in working up the illustrations. About this 



