Carmdian Butterflies. 345 



You will perceive, from the short sketch just given you, that the 

 tendency of scientific investigations, has been to reduce to practical 

 and useful ends the knowledge acquired by research, and that the 

 spirit of enquiry, however exclusively* scientific, has geuerally sub- 

 served in some way one or more of the special interests of man. 

 It will be my anxious desire, in the present course of lectures, to 

 give you a faithful representation of botanical science in its present 

 advanced state, and place prominently before you such important 

 facts and considerations as bear specially on medicine, agriculture 

 and horticulture. I have no doubt you will ere long become in- 

 terested in the subject and it will give me pleasure to furnish you 

 with such information as you may occasionally require, and such 

 facilities for the prosecution of the study as may be within my 

 power. The deeper your study of the operations and phenomena 

 of nature, the more intimate your acquaintance with the structures 

 and functions of the plant, the greater will be the pleasure and 

 gratification you will experience and the more profouud will be 

 your admiration of this portion of God's creation. "With a know- 

 ledge of botanical science, you cannot but take delight hereafter 

 in the contemplation of those beautiful and varied objects of na- 

 ture that will constantly meet your eye, and if you study them as 

 living organizations as well as the manifestations of life they ex- 

 hibit and the laws which govern them — if you study such phe- 

 nomena in the true spirit of wisdom, they will subserve a better 

 and higher purpose than the mere gratification of the mind. They 

 will enrich it with pure and lofty thoughts and raise your souls in 

 admiring contemplation of Him, at whose fiat, at the beginning, 

 " the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his 

 kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his 

 kind," and can we ignore the beauty and perfection of the plant, 

 when it is recorded in the same breath, that '' God saw that it was 



good.;; 



ARTICLE XXXI. — Description of four species of Canadian But- 

 terflies. 

 {Continued from page 318.) 

 Genus II., Pieris. SchranJc. 

 PoNTiA, Fahricius, &c. 

 Palpi, short, cylindrical, moderately compressed, three jointed, 

 the last joint as long or longer than the preceding ; antennse long 



