24 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
VOL. I. 
In this connection, the value of drawing in nature study 
might be emphasised, as a means of impressing oneself 
with— or of insisting on— facts, although it has further 
advantages, apart from this discipline, in minifetering to 
the instinct for art and its embodiment. Ruskin, in his 
Modern Painters, IV., p. 36, wrote “ Paint the leaves as 
they grow. If you can paint one leaf you can paint the 
world,” ^ proposition whose truth he illustrates by reference 
to tlie work of great masters. The context indicates that 
he has in view drawing as well as brush work. I was once 
informed by a Queensland botanist that in the Malay 
language, the word “ to draw ” was identical with that 
meaning “ to write,” a statement that seems to imply more 
than that literaiy expression was originally pictographic. 
“ All the orchids (he stated) I meet are written down, to 
use a Malay expression for drawing — ^tulis bunga it — write a 
flower.” (Sortechini). 
A French Botanist — E. Geru^ain de Sant Pierre, thus 
refers to Linnaeus : — “ Le prince des botanistes. philosophe, 
j)oete, clar-sificateur, createur d.e la nomenclature binare.” 
The Linnean Society of N.S. Wales, in replying to the 
invitation issued by the Royal Academy of Sciences of 
Stockholm, to attend the Upsala Bicentenary Celebra- 
tions relating to the naturalist from whom it had derived its 
name, further referred to Linneeus as being the one 
“ qui primus veras in naturce animantis rationem per 
orbem terrarum propagavit (who first diffused throughout 
the world the true meaning of living things).” 
I cannot claim acquaintance with the offspring of 
Linnaeus’ poetic genius, unless b}/ poUe used by St. Pierre 
is implied its primary meaning “ maker.” However, it 
may be added that Linnaeus closes his famous Systema 
Natures with the lines of poetry that no time wull forget. : — 
0 Jehova. 
“ Quam ampla sunt tua opera ! 
“ Quam sapienter ea faecisti 
“ Quam plena est terra possessione tua.” 
The fact of Linnaeus being regarded as a philosopher and 
a poet, suggests the remark, that there is more in our work 
than is involved in mere collecting and naming specimens. 
“ The well directed sight— Brings, in each flower, an universe 
to light.” My distinguished predecessor in this chair has 
pleaded for the wider outlook, and the exercise of the 
aesthetic sense in regarding nature. I would appeal too 
for a little more of the spirit of Ruskin, as exhibited in his 
Modern Painters, to be shown in its patient study, and I 
would ask that the fact be pondered that it was a poet — 
Goethe— that not only coined the word “ morphology,” 
now so prominent a branch of scientific inquiry, but more- 
