Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/23

 Rh Sweden Natural History is the study of the schools, by which men rise to preferment; and there are no people with more acute or better regulated minds than the Swedes.

To those whose minds and understandings are already formed, this study may be recommended, independently of all other considerations, as a rich source of innocent pleasure. Some people are ever enquiring "what is the use?" of any particular plant, by which they mean "what food or physic, or what materials for the painter or dyer does it afford?" They look on a beautiful flowery meadow with admiration, only in proportion as it affords nauseous drugs or salves. Others consider a botanist with respect only as he may be able to teach them some profitable improvement in tanning, or dyeing, by which they may quickly grow rich, and be then perhaps no longer of any use to