PawsoJi : Weeds. 



5 



I am disposed to grow even more bold in the cause of these 

 Nature-lovers — ^these priests of Nature, 



' Who by the vision splendid 

 Are on their way attended.' 



I am reminded of the exclamation of the first Medici Pope 

 when he heard that the Conclave had elected him : ' Since God 

 has given us the Papacy let us enjoy it!' You have made me 

 your President, and I will say my say. 



I value a naturalist of the type of Thoreau, of John 

 Burroughs, and beyond all of our own Richard Jefferies (for with 

 him I am most familiar), to whom Nature was the mother, 

 companion, and friend, all unscientific though he might be, 

 equally with those whose names are great in biology. Indeed, 

 why should I compare the two who am not competent to make 

 the preference. This is the celestial rivalry of the cherubim and 

 the seraphim. 'The cherubim know the most, and the seraphim 

 love the most.' How shall we say which are the greater ! The 

 fact is that types of mind are various, and to different types 

 different ends seem more desirable. Nature is eminently fitted 

 to stimulate and to satisfy the sympathetic and the artistic 

 faculties of mankind as well as those of pure reason and know- 

 ledge. She is the mother of poetry as well as of physics. We 

 must therefore each enjoy and study her according to our varied 

 insight, for in so doing we shall profit most. 



Especially I think to the young should natural studies be 

 made as alluring and attractive as they really are if properly 

 displayed. The laborious and exact German opens his botanical 

 primer with the cryptogams, and the poor children have to learn 

 the microscopic habits of the fungi and the mosses, obscure and 

 difficult, and to them of little interest, before they are taught 

 anything about the flowers they love to pluck. This method 

 reminds me of the ways of a school with which I was once 

 acquainted, where the boys had to have two helpings of pudding 

 before they were allowed meat. Such a regimen spoils a child's 

 appetite. 



Let not then the botanical beginner be wearied with cell- 

 structure and vascular bundles at the outset. Show him first 

 the beautiful flowers of the field and teach him their ways and 

 their habits. Take, from the wayside, a common dandelion, 

 for example, and let him observe all its wonderful contrivances : 

 how, its little flowers being so insignificant, it collects them 

 together in a showy mass, conspicuous to the insects it wishes 

 to attract, on a stalk which is itself a miracle of construction, 



1905 Januar\- 2 



