XVI 
NOTHER way to develop a love 
for Nature is to ask the aid of 
books. Writers like Thoreau, 
Jefferies, and Burroughs not 
only paint beautiful pictures for our mental 
eye, but stimulate our powers of actual ob- 
servation ; they tell us what they have seen, 
and thus tell us what to look for in our turn. 
And artists’ biographies are full of hints 
and guiding-threads, while now and then a 
painter, like Fromentin, writes descriptions 
which are as wonderful as Thoreau ’s and, 
by their very unlikeness to a naturalist’s de- 
scriptions, greatly assist these in enlarging 
our appreciative sense. But to enlarge this 
as widely and as quickly as possible, there is 
no helper so good as a botanical handbook. 
A singular misunderstanding of the pur- 
pose and results of botanical study seems to 
prevail among intelligent Americans. I do 
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