170 



I shall commence my reply with the two last centuries ; 

 a more enlightened period than any preceding, and in 

 which more attention was paid to the study of nature and 

 her productions, than in former times. 



It appears from the 21, 22, 23, 24, pages of the preceding 

 memoir, that the botanical and agricultural writers of the se- 

 Yenteenth century had been sufficiently observant of the na- 

 tural productions of their country, that my favourite agrostis 

 had not escaped them, and even that they suspected it to 

 be of great value ; — how then came they not to pursue the 

 subject, and actually to make the discovery ? 



Because their object was to detail to the world what 

 they saw and kneiv ; they were not looking for new dis- 

 coveries : in short, they were not experimentalists , and it 

 is by a succession of patient experiments alone, that the 

 properties of new^ or any vegetables, can be found out and 

 established. 



Their successors had other objects in view ; they were all 

 hook-makers looldng to profit from the sale of their com- 

 positions and compilations alone; perfectly indifferent to 

 the general advancement of agricultural science, which 

 they professed to improve and teach. Their motives are well 

 described by Horace 



Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere ; post hoc 

 SecuruSj cadat, an recto Uet Fabula talo. 



It may be more difficult to answer the question I have 

 put, when we open a wider field and inquire, how th« value 

 of florin came to escape the observation of those who for 

 so many centuries occupied, and availed themselves of the 

 produce of our grassy surface. 



These are of two descriptions, Havmakers and Gra- 

 ziers ; who applied the produce of the gramina to the 

 sustenance of their domestic cattle in very different ways. 

 Let us try if either of these had any probability of disco- 



