these studies on the morals and character, I would ask him to point 

 out the immoral young man who is devotedly attached to any 

 branch of natural science. I never knew such a one. There may 

 be such individuals — for religion only can change the heart — but if 

 there be they are very rare exceptions, and the loud clamors which 

 are always raised against the man of science who errs proves how 

 rarely the study of the Creator fails to exert an ennobling effect upon 

 a well regulated mind. Fortunate, indeed, are the youths of either 

 sex who early imbibe a taste for natural knowledge, and whose pre- 

 dilections are not thwarted by injudicious friends." 



It may indeed be said of the botanist what has been said of the 

 astronomer, that a botanist who does not believe in the existence of 

 God is mad, for the sublime beauties of nature which are constantly 

 presented to his mind, must necessarily lead him from nature to 

 nature's God, whom he recognizes as the author of all those splendid 

 marvels of creative wisdom, which are scattered all around him for 

 the use and enjoyment of man. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF BOTANY IN AGRICULTURE AND MEDICINE. 



Botany has an intimate connection with agriculture, and its 

 practical bearing in this respect has not been sufficiently developed. 

 The agriculturalist who combines science with experience and practi- 

 cal observation, may derive some valuable hints from his botanical 

 knowledge, which might lead to the most important results, not 

 only in the cultivation of the plants, which are the sources of his 

 wealth, but in banishing from his fields those troublesome weeds 

 and grasses which keep his plow r s and hoes busy during the whole 

 period of the crop season. It is indeed a very remarkable fact that 

 even physicians, otherwise well educated, know little or nothing 

 about botanical science, when more than one-half of all the remedial 

 agents employed, and some of them the most important of the 

 pharmacopoeia, are derived from the vegetable kingdom, while the 

 other half, comprising mineral substances altogether incompatible 

 with human organism, might be beneficially superseded by vege- 

 table remedies of far greater efficacy and active powers, if physicians 

 studied the numerous plants possessing medicinal virtues, which are 

 diffused in the greatest abundance all over the surface of the globe. 

 None of our medical schools has a chair of botany, which is cer- 

 tainly as great an anomaly in the educational progress of a nation 



