On Gardeners' Flowers 



rightly than another man. I admit that 

 there may be some botanists who are 

 nothing more than hard-headed collectors 

 of names, to whom plants are but hooks 

 on which labels may be hung. But 

 botanists of another class have in this 

 respect been much misrepresented, because 

 they do not, or perhaps cannot, speak out 

 their thoughts. That man who appears 

 only to be seeking after rare or novel 

 species, who may never seem to notice or 

 be interested in mere scientific arrange- 

 ments, is perhaps tremblingly alive to the 

 beauty of what he finds ; and the beauty 

 is of more importance than the science, as 

 the heart is nobler than the head. You 

 may not be able to see what good such an 

 one may get by running on from form to 

 form, as eagerly as if seeking after gold, and 

 perhaps he himself could not tell you ; but 

 if God thought it worth His while to plan 

 these forms, it is surely not beneath the 

 dignity of man to study them. In short, 

 then, a botanist's love for simple natural 

 flowers is generally the evidence of an 

 uncorrupted taste. He has had absolutely 

 nothing to mislead him, for his original 

 motive in the study can seldom be other 

 than the pure inspiration of love ; and the 

 study itself is large and wide, embracing 

 without any exclusiveness great and small, 



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