28 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
Of folk-lore and medicinal use and history and associa- 
tions here you have hints. The bottom of the sack is not 
yet; there are the monographs, years of study expended 
upon one species of plant growing in one locality, perhaps; 
some made up into thick books and some into broad 
quarto pamphlets, with most beautiful plates, that, if 
you were to see them, would tempt you to cut them out 
and steal them, all sunk and lost like dead ships under 
the sand: piles of monographs. There are warehouses 
in London that are choked to the beams of the roof 
with them, and every fresh exploration furnishes another 
shelf-load. The source of the Nile was unknown a very 
few years ago, and now, I have no doubt, there are 
dozens of monographs on the flowers that flourish there. 
Indeed, there is not a thing that grows that may not 
furnish a monograph. The author spends perhaps 
twenty years in collecting his material, during which 
time he must of course come across a great variety of 
amusing information, and then he spends another ten 
years writing out a fair copy of his labours. Then 
‘he thinks it does not quite do in that form, so he snips a 
paragraph out of the beginning and puts it at the end; 
next he shifts some more matter from the middle to the 
preface ; then he thinks it over. It seems to him that 
it is too big, it wants condensation. The scientific world» 
will say he has made too much of it; it ought to read 
very slight, and present the facts: while concealing the 
labour. So he sets about removing the superfluous— 
leaves out all the personal observations, and all the little 
adventures he has met with in his investigations; and 
so, having got it down to the dry bones and stones thereof, 
and omitted all the mortar that stuck them together, 
he sends for the engraver, and the next three years are 
occupied in working up the illustrations. About this 
