THE LITERATURE OF BOTANY. 



BY W. S. BROUGH. 



DOUBTLESS many persons are disinclined to the study 

 of botany from an idea that it consists solely in the 

 learning and committing to memory of a number of very 

 hard names, and so they know nothing of the delightful 

 pleasure an acquaintance with some of earth's brightest 

 treasures brings. It has been truly said that the most 

 lasting pleasures are the simplest and nearest the reach of 

 all. With what joy does a botanist recall his hunts after 

 varieties ! The ramble in the meadows, the exhilarating 

 tramp over the breezy moorland, the quiet saunter in the 

 shady woods, the pleasure of the recognition of familiar 

 friends (the common species), and beyond all, the intense 

 delight of a discovered rarity, cannot be described by words 

 of mine. We have so many books now-a-days, all placing 

 the study in a very attractive aspect, and each showing 

 the easiest way to a mastery of system, that no one need 

 be at all alarmed by the dryness of details, but each may 

 gain so much interest in its acquirement that the hard 

 words themselves almost become a pleasure. But there 

 is another side an attractive one, and one perhaps too 

 little considered the human interest and literature of 

 botany. It lies in the lives of the remarkable men who 

 not only originally found, collected, and catalogued the 

 plants, but also devoted their days to the drawing, and 

 describing, and publishing to the learned world the plants 



