THE EDUCATIONAL EXPOSITOR. 139 
well adapted to attract and rivet the attention of young people, 
boys and girls, as some of the natural sciences; also, of all the 
natural sciences, Botany is one that can be prosecuted in all 
places, and almost in all seasons, at the smallest expenditure either 
of money, or time, or application. The objects of the science in 
question are always either within reach or are easily obtained ; 
and their collection and analysis can be conducted without giving 
pain or offending the most delicately fastidious. The apparently 
formidable nomenclature, which presents a serious obstacle to the 
uninitiated, would be divested of all its terrors, if an object was 
first presented to the learners, and its characters briefly and 
simply pointed out. A term without a corresponding zdea is 
difficult to apprehend or remember ; but in the sciences of obser- 
vation—and natural sciences are based and constructed on this 
faculty—this difficulty never occurs. We meet with this diffi- 
culty in language and in mathematics, where the visible signs are 
only representatives of something else ; but 1a Botany we can ex- 
hibit the very object on which we are to give instruction. If the 
teachers of our schools, both male and female, would occupy only 
one-tenth of the time usually spent m learning the adstrusities 
of grammar and other mental sciences, in giving their pupils 
lessons on the common things which grow at their feet, on plants 
and flowers (all children are fond of flowers), they would thereby 
lay a good foundation for the more difficult portions of a scho- 
lastic course. We deem it no less than a misfortune that our 
teachers and future teachers have not themselves received any 
instruction in the science of natural objects. The study of na- 
ture has in this country been considered only as the privilege of 
the few, who have leisure, learning, and pecuniary means without 
limitation ; and it is to be regretted that very few of these so favour- 
ably circumstanced have contributed either to spread a taste for 
natural science, or have removed the obstacles to its more extensive 
diffusion. The Lecture, which was addressed to the United Asso- 
ciation of Schoolmasters, no doubt was delivered with this express 
purpose and understanding, viz. to diffuse a knowledge of some 
of the more prominent and interesting features of the science ; 
and if the audience had been as well read up in the theory and 
practice of Botany as the lecturer, some of his facts might have 
been reproduced in the schools and among the pupils of this 
country, represented by the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses 
