OF SELBORNE 197 



LETTER XL 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



Selborne, June 2, 1778. 



Dear Sir, 

 The standing objection to botany has always been, that it 

 is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the 

 memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real 

 knowledge : and where the science is carried no farther 

 than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but 

 too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping 

 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 examine 

 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, etc. what not only strengthens our 

 hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures from 

 inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in 

 his true state of nature, seems to be subsisted by spon- 

 taneous 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.^ 



^ See the late Voyages to the South-seas. 



