Garden Botany. 59 



that it is the opinion of many amateurs, that in works spe- 

 cially intended for their use, abstract disquisitions should be 

 purposely avoided. Indeed nothing is more common than to 

 hear people crying out that botany is merely a science of 

 idle speculation, and charging its professors with an absolute 

 neglect of the only essential object connected with its study, 

 that of the properties of plants. But these gentlemen forget, as 

 an ingenious French writer has truly said, that the same ob- 

 servations apply to every other branch of science, which is in 

 its essence pure and theoretical, and that the utility of a parti- 

 cular science is only developed by placing it in combination 

 with several other sciences, when it for the first time becomes 

 applicable to the. wants of mankind. The reason of this is obvi- 

 ous. A particular science abstractedly considered, looks at its 

 integral parts in one point of view only, while on the contrary 

 a knowledge of its relation to others is absolutely indispens- 

 able before any substance whatsoever can be successfully ap- 

 plied to the purposes of man. It is also forgotten by those 

 who affect to despise the study of the vegetable kingdom in a 

 theoretical view, that it often happens that the moment when 

 the labours of the botanist appear to be furthest removed from 

 the wants of society, is precisely that at which he is about to 

 offer an important discovery. For by the peculiar mode of 

 his arrangements, he gives to the world a power of consulting 

 all the writings upon a given subject which have ever ap- 

 peared, and so places the experience and the knowledge of all 

 countries and all ages in a right point of view ; and by an 

 attentive, and as, it appears to ignorant people, by an unneces- 

 sary examination of the characters and peculiarities of a new 

 vegetable, he arrives at a knowledge of the natural relation 

 which it bears to others already known, whence the chemist or 

 the physician may be enabled to form a tolerably accurate 

 notion of the purposes to which it may be applicable. 



We shall now advert to the publications at the head of this 

 article. The Botanical Magazine owes its existence to the 

 late Mr. Wm. Curtis, a sincere lover of nature for her own 

 sake, by whom it was commenced in the year 1787, for 

 the purpose, as its title-page still states, of making ladies 

 and gentlemen scientifically acquainted with the plants they 

 cultivate. At first, the numbers appeared at considerable 

 intervals of time, but the rapid increase which, after the ap- 

 pearance of the few first volumes, took place in its sale, in- 

 duced the publishers to make arrangements for its more speedy 

 delivery. Artists of acknowledged talent were employed in 

 preparing the plates, the drawings for which were at first 

 supplied by Mr. James Sowerby, and eventually by Mr. 



