A COUNTRY NATURALIST. 157 



remarkable workers — workers who towered 

 above the common run of men. With some 

 of these it is known he came in contact. The 

 libraries of the town, too, were good ; and 

 these, doubtless, he found his greatest boon. 

 The botanical books which he was enabled to 

 peruse were the standard works of the period, 

 but none of them so good as the one he was 

 destined to write. Of the books from which 

 he derived his theoretical knowledge, and which 

 most impressed his after-work, we have before 

 us a list. Now, curiously enough, not one of 

 these, even by the widest stretch of imagina- 

 tion, can be called scientific. Order is the 

 first law of science. As yet, as revealed by 

 these books, there was only chaos. So few of 

 the ascertained elements of natural philosophy, 

 as applied to botany, had been as yet collected 

 as to permit any arrangement of species, in 

 any permanently (even over a limited period) 

 nameable order. Our botanist was the mind 

 born to perceive and exhibit such order. Then 

 the simplest and most descriptive nomenclature 

 prevailed, and it was the best. 



Wilson pursued his trade as a shoemaker as 

 his studies progressed. He married, and some 



