A Word for Books 



help ? But no ; he confesses how hard it is 

 to learn the names of plants from one's 

 friends ; he would like, he says, to have a 

 botanist at hand to tell him what this thing 

 is and that ; he carries books of colored pict- 

 ures around wiih him and mourns over their 

 insufficiency and inaccuracy ; but further 

 than this in the path of inquiry he will not 

 go. He has an abnormal hatred for printed 

 facts. If/' he says, someone tells you a 

 plant, you know it at once and never forget 

 it, but to learn it from a book is another 

 matter; it does not at once take root in the 

 mind ; it has to be seen several times before 

 you are satisfied — you waver in your con- 

 victions." 



It seems odd that so patient, so loving an 

 observer of plants was unwilling to take the 

 trouble to read about them ' - several times ' ' 

 in order to know them, but still more odd 

 that he felt this would be needful. It is as 

 though he thought books were something 

 apart from men, not as though men were 

 speaking from their pages. Why should he 

 have trusted the actual voice of a botanist 

 and not his printed voice? Very certainly 



341 



