In order to point out the agreeableness and utility of the study of Natural History, we shall commence by taking it for granted, that all knowledge is pleasure as well as power. If any man doubts this, we refer him to the first page of Mr. Brougham's Preliminary Discourse on the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science. In this Introduction, we shall chiefly endeavour to show that the pleasure and the power obtained will be in direct proportion to the labour bestowed.
To know any thing does not consist in having merely seen it, or in recollecting its name; no naturalist can be said to know a plant, unless he knows its rank in the vegetable kingdom, its structure, habits of growth, the climates and countries in which it abounds, its history in its wild state, and, if a cultivated plant, its domestic history, its culture, properties, and uses.
The tulip and the ranunculus are known to every body, and are deservedly two of the most admired productions of professional florists. There is no child who cannot name them at sight, and no gardener who does not know a great deal about their culture: but how few, among either gardeners or botanical amateurs, know that these two plants, however nearly they may be allied as fine flowers, are very different in point of rank in the scale of vegetable creation; that they belong to separate fundamental divisions of plants, the organisation of the one being much more perfect than that of the other; and that they display wholly different characters of structure and physiological economy, from the seminal embryo through every stage to the perfect plant! Thus the ranunculus, belonging to a division of plants characterised VOL. I.- No. 1.