A Word for Books 
help ? But no ; he confesses how hard it is 
to learn the names of plants from one’s 
friends; he would like, he says, to have a 
botanist at hand to tell him what this thing 
is and that ; he carries books of colored pict- 
ures around with him and mourns over their 
insufficiency and inaccuracy ; but further 
than this in the path of inquiry he will not 
go. He has an abnormal hatred for printed 
facts. “ If,” he says, “ someone tells you a 
plant, you know it at once and never forget 
it, but to learn it from a book is another 
matter ; it does not at once take root in the 
mind ; it has to be seen several times before 
you are satisfied — you waver in your con- 
victions. ’ ’ 
It seems odd that so patient, so loving an 
observer of plants was unwilling to take the 
trouble to read about them ‘ ‘ several times ’ ’ 
in order to know them, but still more odd 
that he felt this would be needful. It is as 
though he thought books were something 
apart from men, not as though men were 
speaking from their pages. Why should he 
have trusted the actual voice of a botanist 
and not his printed voice? Very certainly 
34i 
