But it was not necessary to shew his knowledge for the sake of contrasting it with my ignorance, that Mr Jussieu says this bauhinia is by Mr Bruce taken for an acacia vera. Now the acacia vera is a large, wide-spreading, thorny, hard, red-wooded, rough-barked, gum-bearing tree. Its flower, though sometimes white, is generally yellow; it is round or globular, composed of many filaments or stamina; it is the Spina Egyptiaca, its leaves, in shape and disposition, resembling a mimosa; in Arabic it is called Saiel, Sunt, Gerar; and if M. de Jussieu had been at all acquainted with the history of the east, he must have known it was the tree of every desert, and consequently that I must be better acquainted with it than almost any traveller or botanist now alive. Upon what reasonable ground then could he suppose, upon my bringing to him a rare and elegant species of bauhinia, which probably he had not before seen, that I could not distinguish it from an acacia, of which I certainly brought him none? A large species of Mullein likewise, or, as he pleases to term it, Bouillon Blanc, he has named Verbascum Abyssinicum; and this the unfortunate Mr Bruce, it seems, has called an aromatic herb growing upon the high mountains. I do really believe, that M. de Jussieu is more conversant with the Bouillon Blancs than I am; my Bouillons are of another colour; it must be the love of French cookery, not English taste, that would send a man to range the high mountains for aromatic herbs to put in his Bouillon, if the Verbascum had been really one of these. Although I have sometimes made botany my amusement, I do confess it never was my study, and I believe from this the science has reaped so much the more benefit. I have represented to the eye, with the utmost attention, by the best drawings in natural history ever yet published, and to the understanding in plain English, what I have seen as it appeared to me on the spot, without tacking to it imaginary parts of my own, from preconceived systems of what it should have been, and thereby creating varieties that never existed.