LETTER LXXXII. 



To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



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 knowledge: and, where the 

 science is carried no farther than a mere system- 

 atic classification, the charge is but too true. But 

 the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this asper- 

 sion 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 gar- 

 dener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phy- 

 tologist. Not that system is by any means to be 

 thrown aside ; without system the field of Nature 

 would be a pathless wilderness : but system should 

 be subservient to, not the main object of, pursuit. 



Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention ; 

 and in itself is of the utmost consequence to man- 

 kind, and productive of many of the greatest com- 

 forts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe tim- 

 ber, bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, &c., 

 what not only strengthens our hearts, and exhila- 

 rates our spirits, but what secures us from inclemen- 

 cies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in 



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