Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/27

 Rh striking in some of the phænomena which it displays, is in other points less pleasing to a tender and delicate mind. In botany all is elegance and delight. No painful, disgusting, unhealthy experiments or enquiries are to be made. Its pleasures spring up under our feet, and, as we pursue them, reward us with health and serene satisfaction. None but the most foolish or depraved could derive any thing from it but what is beautiful, or pollute its lovely scenery with unamiable or unhallowed images. Those who do so, either from corrupt taste or malicious design, can be compared only to the fiend entering into the garden of Eden.

Let us turn from this odious picture to the contemplation of Nature, ever new, ever abundant in inexhaustible variety. Whether we scrutinize the damp recesses of woods in the wintry months, when the numerous tribes of mosses are displaying