THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY. 
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venience or to explain our limited knowledge, and thus it 
is we speak of laws when there is but 
One God, one law, one element. 
And one far off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves.” 
Tennyson, In Memoriam. 
There is no doubt that the less a person’s knowledge of 
natural objects, the less difficult will be classification to him, 
as he merely reasons from some external resemblances pre¬ 
sented by unimportant parts; and thus the common laurel, 
the kahlmia, and rhododendron are in the States all called 
laurels, whilst there also the tulip tree—liriodendron—is 
called the American poplar, the only resemblance being that 
they are both tall trees, and the leaves of both are of a bright 
green colour. Perhaps the earliest attempt of a classification 
of plants of this kind is the one of the Scriptures—‘‘ Grass 
and herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees yielding fruit.” 
The multiplicity of the objects the botanist has to study, 
and their immense variety, are eloquently brought before the 
mind’s eye by Professor Lindley, in his introduction to the 
vegetable kingdom, on whieh account we introduce it in this 
place. 
Wherever the eye is directed it encounters an infinite 
multitude of the most dissimilar forms of vegetation. Some 
are cast ashore by the ocean in the form of leathery straps or 
thongs, or are collected into pelagic meadows of vast extent; 
others crawl over mines, and illuminate them with phospho¬ 
rescent gleams. Rivers and tranquil waters teem with green 
filaments; mud throws up its gelatinous scum ; the human 
lungs, ulcers, and sordes, of all sorts, bring forth a living 
brood; timber crumbles to dust beneath insidious spawn; 
corn crops change to fetid soot; all matter in decay is seen to 
teem with mouldy life; and those filaments that scum-bred 
spawn and mould, alike acknowledge a vegetable origin. The 
bark of ancient trees is carpeted with velvet, they are hung 
with grey-beard tapestry, and microscopical scales overspread 
their leaves ; the faee of rocks is stained with ancient colours, 
coeval with their own exposure to air; and those, too, are 
citizens of the great world of plants. Heaths and moors wave 
with a tough and wiry herbage ; meadows are clothed with an 
emerald mantle, amidst which spring flowers of all hues and 
forms; bushes throw abroad their many-fashioned foliage, 
twiners cover and choke them; above all wave the arms of 
the ancient forest, and those, too, acknowledge the sovereignty 
of Flora. Their individual forms, too, change at every stejD. 
