NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 16 1 



off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names ; 

 he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of 

 vegetation, should examme the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, 

 should promote their cultivation ; and graft the gardener, the planter, 

 and the husbandman, on the phytologist. 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 mankind, and productive of many of the 

 greatest comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe timber, 

 bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, &c. what not only strengthens 

 our hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures us from 

 inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state 

 of nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation ; in middle 

 climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the 

 produce of the field and garden ; and it is towards the polar extremes 

 only that, like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with 

 flesh alone, and is driven, to what hunger has never been known to 

 compel the very beasts, to prey on his own species.* 



The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the 

 commerce of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, 

 as may be seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginseng, 

 betel, paper, &c. As every climate has its peculiar produce, our 

 natural wants bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of 

 trade each distant part is supplied with the growth of every latitude. 

 But, without the knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have 

 been content with our hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate 

 fruits of India and the salutiferous drugs of Peru. 



Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species 

 of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself 

 acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a man readily 

 ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley, or 

 at least one sort of wheat or barley from another. 



But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most neglected ; 

 neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from 

 the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and 

 nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 



The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly, 

 and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the swerd of 

 the district where he lived would be an useful member of society : to 

 raise a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic 

 knowledge ; and he would be the best commonwealth's man that could 

 occasion the growth of " two blades of grass where one alone was seen 

 before." I am, &c. 



* See the late Voyage to the South Seas. 



