Elizabeth Town Gazette

For the Gazette.

Messrs. Editors,—I have been surprised to find that so small a number of the inhabitants of this borough attend the Botanical Lectures now delivering in the Court-house. Botany is among the most pleasing sciences, and the attention now paid to it in most of our respectable towns: must incline the friends of improvement to wish that it should excite more notice here. But it is probable that many persons suppose the exhibition of Mr. Duddgeon's transparent paintings, similar to those frequent shows, by which the public are induced to spend their money without profit. For the information of such, it may be well to observe, that these paintings were invented by the celebrated botanist Dr. Thornton, and have been employed in England with great success and approbation. They were afterwards sold to Mr. Whitlow, for the sum of ten thousand dollars, and have been made instrumental in teaching many hundred persons in the United States. The facility with which the science may be acquired from them, cannot be imagined, but by those who have paid a little attention to the subject. A very few lectures present the mind with those leading principles of the Linnean system, by which a thorough knowledge of botany may be acquired. These transparencies are, in fact, to the science of botany, what maps are to the study of geography.
If it should be said, that there is no great utility to be derived from a knowledge of botany; it may be replied, that all those studies which lead directly to the contemplation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, are proper for man, and must naturally expand and elevate the mind. Every thing which helps us to extend our rational powers, and at the same time to give us practical knowledge, must be desirable.

While it is anxiously desired that the young, especially of the tenderer sex; should be qualified for holding an interesting rank in society; while great efforts are made to render them highly accomplished, it is to be regretted that more pains should not be bestowed upon their solid improvement. Give them some relish for scientific pursuits—some insight into the works of nature: enable them to improve a walk in the field, and to have some idea of those things of which they hardly know the names; and they will be less desirous to waste their time in frivolous conversation, in a loitering consumption of time, in the perusal of those volumes of nonsense, which not only fail to enlarge the understanding, but which tend to poison the heart.

There are few studies which can be made subservient to more innocent and unwearying recreation, than botany. It is most peculiarly calculated to fill the mind with pleasurable emotions, and to calm and sweeten the temper. Go then,

"Mark the matchless workings of the power
That shuts within the seed the future flower;
Bids these, in elegance of form excel,
In colour these, and those delight the smell;
Sends nature forth, the daughter of the skies,
To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes."

A FRIEND TO IMPROVEMENT.