212 SPRIKG. 



beyond the record even of the ancient nations, and that 

 the invention is always attributed to the gods ; but yet 

 while there is this remote antiquity, the field for study 

 must be more wide and productive than in any other 

 portion of human knowledge, inasmuch as the study 

 and culture of plants have received more improvement 

 in very recent times than any other branch of human 

 occupation ; and that within the last fifty years, more 

 has been added to our knowledge of plants than to any 

 other branch of our knowledge. 



There is this farther advantage, that the love of plants 

 calls us into the fields, leads us to the place where every 

 one may study ; and then when we have wearied ourselves 

 with the scene, we can turn to the inhabitants ; when we 

 have made ourselves masters of all that can be known 

 about the tree its history, its age, its uses, we are 

 still able, nay better prepared, for knowing what are 

 the living things to which it gives food and shelter ; 

 and there is not a plant which does not afford this 

 variety of nutrition ; the flower has its industrious bees, 

 and its fluttering butterflies ; the bud its canker worm ; 

 the root its grub ; aphides load the twigs, and pro- 

 ducing their singular races, race after race, all fe- 

 males, till the close of the season, absolutely cover the 

 tender extremities of the twigs, glaze the leaves over 

 with their honey dew, and by the rapidity of their in- 

 crease, defy the hosts of spoilers to which they are ex- 

 posed, and without which, small as they are, they would 

 destroy the whole vegetation of the year; even the solitary 

 bush has its bird, and the poor solitary in the remote vil- 

 lage, finds companionship in nature. One bird that is 



