Botany, for instance, is by many regarded as a dry science. Yet though without it we may admire flowers and trees, it is only as strangers, only as one may admire a great man or a beautiful woman in a crowd. The botanist, on the contrary--nay, I will not say the botanist, but one with even a slight knowledge of that delightful science--when he goes out into the woods, or into one of those fairy forests which we call fields, finds himself welcomed by a glad company of friends, every one with something interesting to tell. Dr. Johnson said that, in his opinion, when you had seen one green field you had seen all; and a greater even than Johnson--Socrates--the very type of intellect without science, said he was always anxious to learn, and from fields and trees he could learn nothing. It has, I know, been said that botanists "Love not the flower they pluck and know it not. And all their botany is but Latin names." Contrast this, however, with the language of one who would hardly claim to be a master in botany, though he is certainly a loving student. "Consider," says Ruskin, "what we owe to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, countless, and peaceful spears of the field! Follow but for a little time the thought of all that we ought to recognize in those words. All spring and summer is in them--the walks by silent scented paths, the rest in noonday heat, the joy of the herds and flocks, the power of all shepherd life and meditation; the life of the sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks and soft blue shadows, when else it would have struck on the dark mould or scorching dust; pastures beside the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea; crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, softening in their fall the sound of loving voices." My own tastes and studies have led me mainly in the direction of Natural History and Archaeology; but if you love one science, you cannot but feel intense interest in them all. How grand are the truths of Astronomy! Prudhomme, in a sonnet beautifully translated by Arthur O'Shaugnessy, has pictured an Observatory. He says-- "'Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height, Exploring, all the dark, descries afar Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are." He notices a comet, and calculating its orbit, finds that it will return in a thousand years-- "The star will come. It dare not by one hour Cheat Science, or falsify her calculation; Men will have passed, but, watchful in the tower, Man shall remain in sleepless contemplation; And should all men have perished in their turn, Truth in their place would watch that star's return." Ernest Rhys well says of a student's chamber--