82 
BOTANY AS A SCIENCE. 
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 navigation, as may 
be seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginseng, betel, paper, &c. 
As every climate has its peculiar 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 salutiferous drugs of Peru.” 
The mere knowledge of names is simple — a faculty of memory; and so far 
Mr. White was correct in his first admission. But memory in the abstract is a 
noble gift — one which ought to be highly prized and cherished. It has, however, no 
reference to any science, and Botany is one of a very high order ; for, to say the 
least of it, no one can study it, even in its simplest form — that of the Linnaean System 
- — without having frequent recourse to the microscope — an instrument which, as the 
late Br. Chalmers taught, is perhaps better calculated to reveal the wonders of 
creative power, than is the telescope, in as much as it brings to view the infinitesimal 
minutiae of organisation. Say, then, that a botanist of the Linnaean school seeks 
only to assign any plant, new and strange to himself, its proper place in one of the 
classes, how, we ask, can he attain his object, but by dissecting the flower, and 
appealing to the microscope at every step ? And what must be the result ? Will 
not the positions of the calyx, corolla, stamina, and pistillum, with their multifarious 
appendages, exhibit the wisdom and beauty of structure ? And this — to say nothing 
of the position of the seed-vessel, the attachment of the seeds to the placentas, and 
the evident vitality and vitalising powers of the farina — does it not appeal to the 
mind, and arouse a feeling of that high admiration, which Lord Bacon styled “ the 
superlative of praise ? ” Surely they who can denounce the study of even Structural 
Botany, as a waste of time, a frivolous pursuit, are no friends to true piety. 
The history of Botany is well calculated to demonstrate the importance of the 
science ; and therefore the reader is requested to peruse, as a valuable compendium, 
the article “Botany,” which commences at page 243, vol. v., of the “ Penny 
Cyclopaedia.” In it the progressive advances of the science are ranged under 
six eras ; the first of which commences at the period when Theophrastus succeeded M 
to the chair of Aristotle, 324 years before Christ, He, it is said, was acquainted Ifi 
with not more than 355 plants. Paying little attention to the denomination of | 
species, he appears, nevertheless, to have had some notion of the sexes of plants, as ' ij 
he alluded “to the necessity of bringing the male dates into contact with the ■ ^ 
females.” By the time of Pliny the Naturalist, who flourished during the reign of ; ; 
the Emperor Vespasian, Botany had made some advances, for the sexes of plants : " 
were spoken of in positive terms ; grafting and budding are also described, and the 
agency by which the union of the two members is efi’ected, alluded to in terms 
sufficiently precise. Here, however, a blank occurs. Science made no advances ; it 
