STUDY OF NATURE. 15 



accomplish that, we shall be satisfied. We write not 

 for professed naturalists, but in so far to show, that 

 no technicality can so hedge in the glorious field of 

 creation, as that plain people, in the exercise of their 

 ordinary understandings, shall not be able to enter 

 upon and explore it, if those plain people will but 

 make use of their own judgment, and take a general 

 view of that which, philosophically considered, is not 

 a number of particulars, but one whole, no part of 

 which can be understood without some knowledge of 

 the rest and the connection. For this reason, it is just 

 as necessary to contemplate the season as the scene or 

 the inhabitant ; and he who confines his researches to 

 any one corner or department of nature, how much 

 soever he may contribute to the wisdom of others, is 

 not himself in the highway that leads to it ; and it is 

 just because some, whose industry has merited praise, 

 when they have merely detailed what they saw, have 

 not taken all the elements into account, that they have 

 laid themselves open to censure when they have begun 

 to theorize. It is not very easy, perhaps not altogether 

 possible, to find a plan which shall connect the natural 

 history of the elements with that of those productions 

 of the earth upon which the elements have so much 

 known influence, and probably so much more that is 

 not known ; but the one that most naturally suggests 

 itself, and perhaps, on that account, the most simple, is 

 the year. 



