JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

"A plant is not to be studied as an absolutely dead thing, but rather as a sentient being.... To measure petals, to count stamens, to describe pistils without reference to their functions, or the why and wherefore of their existence, is to content one's



self with husks in the presence of a feast of fatness - to listen to the rattle of dry bones rather than the heavenly harmonies of life. We have reason to be profoundly thankful for the signs to be seen on every side, that the dreary stuff which was called botany in the teaching of the past will soon cease to masquerade in its stolen costume, and that our children and our children's children will study not dried specimens or drier books, but the living things which Nature furnishes in such profusion.... "The reason of this radical change is not far to seek. Since man has learned that the universal brotherhood of life includes himself as the highest link in the chain of organic creation, his interest in all things that live and move and have a being has greatly increased. The movements of the monad now appeal to him in a way that was impossible under the old conceptions. He sees in each of the millions of living forms with which the earth is teeming, the action of many of the laws which are operating in himself; and has learned that to a great extent his welfare is dependent on these seemingly insignificant relations; that in ways undreamed of a century ago they affect human progress." -

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