102 
PROCEEDINGS OP SOCIETIES. 
your previously-acquired knowledge must be exerted; and it is astonishing how 
soon the eye acquires the power, the faculty of discrimination. A new sense 
seems to open on the mind—a relish, a delight in those departments of Nature, 
where previously all was either void, or a mass of unintelligible inextricable 
confusion. 
But the most important inquiry is, How are we to learn? “As a little child,’ 
must be the answer. Asa child learns its mother-tongue, a thousand-fold more 
difficult than anything you are called upon to attain through the medium of 
these lectures, which, it is confessed, are not so much for the purpose of teaching 
the science as to point out the best mode of acquiring it for ourselves. Now, a 
child does not obtain language through the medium of grammars and dictionaries, 
but by daily, hourly observation. For instance, in your walks you pluck a flower 
without the least notion of its name or properties. Having, however, learned a 
few of the simplest terms of the science (which will shortly be explained by the 
aid of diagrams, through the medium of that best of all teachers, the eye), you 
commence with the practical part of Botany immediately. 
To shew, even in this introductory lecture, how easily and pleasantly the 
science may be acquired in the mode we have adopted, we give you credit, a few 
moments only, for a little more knowledge than most of you possess; but the 
terms will be easily understood by means of our drawing. 
Here you observe what is called a flower; which, being a term for millions of 
productions of the like nature, produces no definite notion in the mind by its use 
or application. Let us, however, examine it a little closer; this flower is com¬ 
posed of several parts, which parts, be it remembered, in their natural state never 
alter. Hence, to the antipodes, all groups of plants, genera and species, are built 
precisely on the same model—a wonderful illustration of the unity of that 
Creative Power which has fashioned every thing according to the council of His 
own will! 
How, with this fact, written as with a sunbeam through the whole range 
of created existence, can philosophers say, or even imagine, this great and 
wondrous plan has originated in chance, or, to use a -well-known phrase, “ by a 
fortuitous concourse of atoms!” 
Let us now examine this flower more attentively, Linn m us having taught us 
to make it the first object of our study. 
These four divisions are called petals ; never mind why at present—a child 
does not ask the derivation of every new word he learns ; that would so harass 
and incumber him, he would be unable to proceed. Let us pull them off, and 
here is the situation of affairs. These little processes, tipt with powdery knobs, 
are called stamens. You observe tw r o of these, and, according to the system we 
purpose, in the first place, to adopt, the classes or great divisions of all plants, 
