(_From Chit-chat, in the Magazine of Natural History, by Dovaston and
Von Osdat._)
_Dov._ Ray tells a humourous story, that, after the patiently exploring
commissioners, at the end of their long examinations, deliberately
confessed their utter ignorance to account for the Goodwin Sands, an old
man gravely asserted Tenterden steeple to be the cause.
_Von Os._ Tenterden steeple!
_Dov._ Ay; Tenterden steeple: for that those sands first appeared the
year it was erected.
_Von Os._ And the slightest interview with the mass of mankind, any
hour, will prove the race of Tenterden philosophers to be far from
extinct.
_Dov._ Particularly with regard to facts relative to natural history:
and this is the more lamentable, and perhaps the more surprising, when
we consider its unlimited adaptability to all capacities, ages, sexes,
and ranks; and, moreover, the absolute necessity of many parts of it to
their intellectual existence.
_Von Os._ There is in our village, a slater, very fond of keeping bees.
These useful insects, he says, at breeding-time sweat prodigiously; and
each lays four eggs at the bottom of each cell: soon after which, he has
observed the combs to become full of maggots, which must be carefully
destroyed by smoke! When any one of his numerous family is buried, as
the corpse passes out of the house, he carefully loosens every hive, and
lifts it up; otherwise, he says, the bees would all die!
_Dov._ The superstitions about bees are numberless.
_Von Os._ And yet this poor fellow believes himself inspired with "grace
abounding;" and readily undertakes to "_spound_," as he calls it, any
verse read to him, however remotely insulated from the context.
_Dov._ But what would you think of a gentleman I have the pleasure of
visiting in the higher ranks, and whose conversation is really a
happiness to me, who talks of little young bees?--and really believes
that they grow! He smiled at me compassionately when I told him that
insects never grew when in the perfect state; but, like Minerva from the
brain of Jove, issue full-armed with sharpest weapons, and corslets of
burnished green, purple, and gold, in panoply complete: yet is this
gentleman a man of genius, wit, and very extensive knowledge.
_Von Os._ Not in bees.
_Dov._ He was not aware of the numerous species of British bees; and
that several, of a small intrepid sort, will enter the hives, and prey
on the treasures of their more industrious congeners.
_Von Os._ Reasoning from analogy does not do in natural history.
_Dov._ No; for who, without observation, or the information of others,
ever by analogical reasoning could reconcile the enormous difference of
size and colour, in the sexes of some of the humble bees?--or ever
discover that in some species there are even females of two sizes?
_Von Os._ But these never grow.
_Dov._ Certainly not. Bees, however, hatched in very old cells, will be
somewhat smaller: as each maggot leaves a skin behind which, though
thinner than the finest silk, layer after layer, contracts the cells,
and somewhat compresses the future bee.
_Von Os._ No ignorance is so contemptible as that of what is hourly
before our eyes. I do not so much wonder at the fellow who inquired if
America was a very large town, as at him who, finding the froth of the
Cicada spumaria L. on almost every blade in his garden, wondered where
were all the cuckoos that produced it.
_Dov._ They call it cuckoo-spit, from its plentiful appearance about the
arrival of that bird.
_Von Os._ That is reasoning from analogy.
_Dov._ And yet I see not why the bird should be given to spitting;
unless, indeed, he came from America.
_Von Os._ The vulgar, too, not only delight in wonders inexplicable, but
have a rabid propensity to pry into futurity.
_Dov._ I believe that propensity is far from being confined to the
vulgar.
_Von Os._ True; but not in so ridiculous a way: as they prophesy the
future price of wheat from the number of lenticular knobs (containing
the sporules) in the bottom of a cup of the fungus Nidularia.
_Dov._ The weather may be foretold with considerable certainty, for a
short time, from many hygrometric plants, and the atmospheric influence
on animals.
_Von Os._ And from _Cloudology_, by the changing of primary clouds into
compound; and these resolving themselves into nimbi, for rain; or
gathering into cumuli, for fair weather. This is like to become a very
useful and pleasing science.
_Dov._ It is wonders of this kind, and forewarnings of this nature, that
natural history offers to the contemplative mind: in the place of
superstitious follies, and unavailing predictions, such as the
foretelling of luck from the number or chattering of magpies; and the
wonder how red clover changes itself into grass, as many a farmer at
this moment believes.
_Von Os._ Linnaeus himself was a bit of a prophet; as, indeed, thus well
he might; for experience and observation amount almost to the power of
vatacination. In his _Academic Aménities_ he says, "Deus, O.M. et Natura
nihil frustra creaverit. Posteros tamen tot inventuros fore utilitates
ex muscis arguor, quot ex reliquis vegetabilibus."
_Dov._ English it, Von Osdat; thou'rt a scholar.
_Von Os._ "God and Nature have made nothing in vain. Posterity may
discover as much in mosses, as of utility in other herbs."
_Dov._ And, truly, so they may: one lichen is already used as a blessed
medicine in asthma; and another to thicken milk, as a nutritive posset.
And who, enjoying the rich productions of our present state of
horticulture, can recur without wonder to the tables of our ancestors?
They knew absolutely nothing of vegetables in a culinary sense; and as
for their application in medicine, they had no power unless gathered
under planetary influence, "sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."
_Von Os._ When Mercury was culminating, or Mars and Venus had got into
the ninth house.
_Dov._ 'Tis curious to reflect, that at the vast baronial feasts, in the
days of the Plantagenets and Tudors, where we read of such onslaught of
beeves, muttons, hogs, fowl and fish, the courtly knights and beauteous
dames had no other vegetable save bread--not even a potato!
_Von Os._
"They carved at the meal with their gloves of steel,
And drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd."
_Dov._ And when the cloth was drawn--
_Von Os._ Cloth!--
_Dov._ They had scarce an apple to give zest to their wine.
_Von Os._ We read of roasted crabs; and mayhap they had baked acorns and
pignuts.
_Dov._ Ha! ha! ha!--Caliban's dainties. Now we have wholesome vegetables
almost for nothing, and pine-apples for a trifle. Thanks to Mr.
Knight--push the bottle--here's to his health in a bumper.
_Von Os._ Who, walking on Chester walls in those days, and seeing the
Brassica oleracea, where it grows in abundance, would have supposed that
from it would spring cabbages as big as drums, and cauliflowers as
florid as a bishop's wig?
_Dov._ Or cautiously _chaumbering_ an acrid sloe, imagine it to be the
parent of a green gage?
_Von Os._ This is the Education of Vegetables.
_Dov._ The March of Increment!
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