SELBORNE, _June_ 2_nd_, 1778.
Dear Sir,--The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a
pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving
the mind or advancing any real knowledge; and, where the science is
carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is
but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this
aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should
study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation,
should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should
promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the
husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be
thrown aside; without system the field of Nature would be a pathless
wilderness; but system should be subservient to, not the main object of,
pursuit.
Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the
utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the greatest
comforts and elegances of life. To plants we owe timber, bread, beer,
honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only strengthens our
hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures us from
inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state
of nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation; in middle
climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the produce
of the field and garden; and it is towards the polar extremes only that,
like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone,
and is driven to what hunger has never been known to compel the very
beasts, to prey on his own species.
The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the commerce
of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, as may be
seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginsing, betel,
paper, etc. As every climate has its peculiar produce our natural wants
bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of trade each distinct
part is supplied with the growth of every latitude. But, without the
knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have been content with our
hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the
salutiferous drugs of Peru.
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species of
each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself
acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a man readily
ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley, or
at least one sort of wheat or barley from another.
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most neglected;
neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from
the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and nutritive
from the dry and juiceless.
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly and
grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the sward of the
district where he lived would be a useful member of society: to raise a
thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic
knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth's man that could
occasion the growth of "two blades of grass where one alone was seen
before."