CLASSIFICATION. 19 



wise for what it is done ; and then do it well by timely pinching 

 or branchlet shortening ; never, unless, indeed, the case is a desperate 

 one, by limb-cutting or branch-hacking : always remember that pinching a 

 sprig saves many a bough. 



CHAPTER 11. 



CLASSIFICATION. 



It is a matter of much amusement to the unsophisticated lover of 

 Nature, and student of her mysteries, to observe how utterly that class 

 of philosophers who would reduce the knowledge of these mysteries 

 within the limits of technicalities, are baffled or bewildered by well 

 nigh insurmountable anomalies which present themselves in the details 

 of nomenclature to the systems they affect to establish. 



^Nature, undoubtedly, has bright paths of truthfulness through her 

 mysterious ways, if we only could discover them ; but, in order to do 

 this, laborious research is often necessary ; and, in the meanwhile, in 

 this particular branch of science she refuses to be fettered by any 

 erroneous fastidiousness of over-done classification : and the conse- 

 quence has been that, at various periods of time, systems which 

 antiquity had received and venerated, and which modern conceit had 

 rejected, are, at length, as it would seem', in a great degree, reinstated 

 in their pristine supremacy. 



In no department of natural science has this been more conspicu- 

 ously the case than in that which is the subject of my present 

 enterprise — the habits of the firs and pines. Let any intelligent reader 

 take into his hands for perusal, the works of such of the ancients as 

 Columella, Dioscorides, Hesiod, Homer, Pliny, Apuleus, and Yirgil ; or 

 of another period, those of such men as Decandolle, Jussieu, Linnreus, 

 and Tournefort : and the botanists of our own country : and he will have 

 before him a cloud of witnesses, great and notable instances of the 

 correctness of what I now affirm. 



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