Botanical Harmony Delineated Author:Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOTANICAL HARMONY, E L I N E A T E APPLICATIONS OF SOME GENERAL LAWS OF NATURE TO PLANTS. OEFORE I proceed to fpeak of plants, t muft be indulged in mak... more »ing a few refleftions on the language of Bot- . , We are Hill fo yoilng in the ftudy of Nature, that our languages are deficient in terms to exprefs her inoft common harmonies. This is fo true, that however exaft the defcriptions of plants may be, and compiled by, Botanifts of whatever ability, it is impoffible to diftinguifh them in the fields, unlefs you haveprevioufly feeri them in Nature, or, at leaft, in ari herbary. Perfons, who think they have made the greateft proficiericy 'in Botany, need only attempt to draw on paper a plant which they have never feen, after the defcription of the moft accurate Mafter, to be convinced hbw widely the copy deviates from the original. Men of genius have, neverthelefs, taken inexpreffible pains to affigrt charafteriftic names to the different parts of plants. They have even borrowed nioft of thofe names from the Greek, a language of finghlar energy of exprcf- flon. From this has refulted another inconvfcniency'; it is, that thofe names, being for the moft part compounds, Cannot be rendered into modern language ; and for this reafon it is that a great part of the Works of Linnaus arc abfblutely incapable of tranflation. Thefe learned and s myfteriotis ejpreffions, no doulbt, d.iffnfe a venerable air over tlie; Rudy of Botany ; but Nature has no need of fuch refources of human art to attraft our refpeft. The fublimity of her Laws can eafily difpenfe with the em- phafis and obfcurity of our expreflions. The more light a man carries in his own bofom, the more wonderful he efteems it to be. After all, moft of hofe foreign names, employed particularly by the herd of Bota...« less