BOTANY. 
207 
of the utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many 
of the greatest comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we 
owe timber, bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, &c., what 
not only strengthens our hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but 
what secures us from inclemencies of weather and adorns Qur 
persons. Man, in his true state of nature, seems to be subsisted 
by spontaneous vegetation : in middle climes, where grasses pre- 
vail, he mixes some animal food with the produce of the field and 
garden : and it is towards the polar extremes only that, like his 
kindred bears and wolvies, he gorges himself with flesh alone, 
and is driven, to what hunger has never been known to compel 
the very beasts, to prey on his own species.* 
The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the 
commerce of nations, and have been the great promoters of navi- 
gation, as may be seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, 
opium, ginseng, betel, paper, &c. As every climate has its pe- 
culiar produce, our natural wants bring on a mutual intercourse ; 
so that by means of trade each distant part is supplied with the 
growth of every latitude. But, without the knowledge of plants 
and their culture, we must have been content with our hips and 
haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the salu- 
tiferous drugs of Peru. 
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various 
species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to 
make himself acquainted with those that are useful. You shall 
see a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly 
know wheat from barley, or at least one sort of wheat or barley 
from another. 
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most 
neglected ; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish 
the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the 
succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless. 
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a 
northerly, and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could im- 
prove the swerd of the district where he lived would be a useful 
member of society : to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would 
be worth volumes of systematic knowledge ; and he would be 
the best commonwealth's man that could occasion the grow^th of 
" two blades of grass where one alone was seen before. '^f 
I am, &c. 
* See the late Voyages to the South Seas. 
t This letter has,^with good reason, been often recommended to the attentive perusal of the 
philosophical botanist. — Ed. 
