BOTANY. 



sudden reverse of affection, that strange ajrtoropy/), 

 which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind 

 to the most passionate fondness, is the occasion 

 of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of 

 the earth. Without this provision, one favourite 

 district would be crowded with inhabitants, while 

 others would be destitute and forsaken. But 

 the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous supe- 

 riority, and to oblige the young to seek for new 

 abodes ; and the rivalry of the males in many 

 kinds prevents their crowding the one on the 

 other. Whether the swallows and house-martin 

 return in the same exact number annually is not 

 easy to say, for reasons given above ; but it is 

 apparent, as I have remarked before in my Mono- 

 graphics, that the numbers returning bear no 

 manner of proportion to the numbers retiring. 



XL. 



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 knowiedge ; 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 vegetation, should examine the powers and 

 virtues of efficacious 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 



