viii Spring and its Studies 145 



often as grammars, and in any case copious as dictionaries, 

 of the science ; yet with these most general of all phenomena 

 under consideration, left unmentioned in the one, nay, the 

 very technical name of their study Phenology alone for- 

 gotten in the crowded columns of the other. Whereas here 

 is the essential "course" in the subject indicated say 

 rather openly revealed to student and teacher by Nature 

 herself with clearness as in no other science. For the 

 child then, Flora's Feast is as yet the best, almost the 

 only true primer of botany ; for the older student the 

 Nattiral History of Selborne remains a central and 

 inspiring classic. The more developed and systematised 

 Naturalises Diary is the best -vade mecutn, to which a 

 Flora (perferably a district or county one) comes in as a 

 subordinate, though indispensable adjunct, and desirably 

 also any simple manual of garden flowers. " Am I to read 

 no text-books then?" the dismayed student constantly asks. 

 The writer for one answers, with deeper and better justified 

 conviction every year, Read? certainly not ; Consult? yes, 

 constantly, by help of the index, for every point and diffi- 

 culty as it arises, for all information as it is desired. Thus 

 you will gradually get all the facts and results and methods 

 which it contains, while thus, and probably thus only, can 

 you avoid that elaborately formalist analysis of the subject 

 from which every science has such difficulty to escape. 

 Botany is a drama of nature, and this summer is your 

 opportunity of seeing it. That text-book is not really a book 

 of the play ; of that we have as yet only a multifarious and 

 scattered polyglot literature, the jottings and notes of many 

 hands; and though the text-book is for practical purposes 

 your first guide to the literature, it may be almost your only 

 substitute for it, you must bear in mind that its careful 

 summaries of results of research are but new patches upon 

 an old garment, new wine in old bottles. That is to say, 



