324 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XL. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, June 2, 1778. 



THE standing objection to botany has always been, 

 that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises 

 the memory, without improving the mind or advancing 

 any real knowledge : and, where the science is carried 

 no farther than a mere systematic classification, the 

 charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous 

 of wiping off this aspersion, should be by no means 

 content with a list of names ; he should study plants 

 philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegeta- 

 tion, should examine the powers and virtues of effica- 

 cious herbs, should promote their cultivation ; and graft 

 the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the 

 phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be 

 thrown aside ; without system the field of Nature would 

 be a pathless wilderness ; but system should be subser- 

 vient to, not the main object of, pursuit. 



Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention ; and in 

 itself is of the utmost consequence to mankind, and 

 productive of many of the greatest comforts and elegan- 

 cies of life. To plants we owe timber, bread, beer, 

 honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, &c. what not only 

 strengthens our hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but 

 what secures us from inclemencies of weather and 

 adorns our persons. Man, in his true state of nature, 

 seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation: in 

 middle climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some 

 animal food with the produce of the field and garden : 

 and it is towards the polar extremes only that, like his 

 kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh 

 alone, and is driven, to what hunger has never been 



