ERRORS IN NATURAL HISTORY.
(From Chit-chat, in the Magazine of Natural History, by Dovaston and Von Osdat.)
Dov. Ray tells a humourous story, that, after the patiently exploring commissioners, at the end of their long examinations, deliberately confessed their utter ignorance to account for the Goodwin Sands, an old man gravely asserted Tenterden steeple to be the cause.
Von Os. Tenterden steeple!
Dov. Ay; Tenterden steeple: for that those sands first appeared the year it was erected.
Von Os. And the slightest interview with the mass of mankind, any hour, will prove the race of Tenterden philosophers to be far from extinct.
Dov. Particularly with regard to facts relative to natural history: and this is the more lamentable, and perhaps the more surprising, when we consider its unlimited adaptability to all capacities, ages, sexes, and ranks; and, moreover, the absolute necessity of many parts of it to their intellectual existence.
Von Os. There is in our village, a slater, very fond of keeping bees. These useful insects, he says, at breeding-time sweat prodigiously; and each lays four eggs at the bottom of each cell: soon after which, he has observed the combs to become full of maggots, which must be carefully destroyed by smoke! When any one of his numerous family is buried, as the corpse passes out of the house, he carefully loosens every hive, and lifts it up; otherwise, he says, the bees would all die!
Dov. The superstitions about bees are numberless.
Von Os. And yet this poor fellow believes himself inspired with "grace abounding;" and readily undertakes to "spound," as he calls it, any verse read to him, however remotely insulated from the context.
Dov. But what would you think of a gentleman I have the pleasure of visiting in the higher ranks, and whose conversation is really a happiness to me, who talks of little young bees?—and really believes that they grow! He smiled at me compassionately when I told him that insects never grew when in the perfect state; but, like Minerva from the brain of Jove, issue full-armed with sharpest weapons, and corslets of burnished green, purple, and gold, in panoply complete: yet is this gentleman a man of genius, wit, and very extensive knowledge.
Von Os. Not in bees.
Dov. He was not aware of the numerous species of British bees; and that several, of a small intrepid sort, will enter the hives, and prey on the treasures of their more industrious congeners.
Von Os. Reasoning from analogy does not do in natural history.
Dov. No; for who, without observation, or the information of others, ever by analogical reasoning could reconcile the enormous difference of size and colour, in the sexes of some of the humble bees?—or ever discover that in some species there are even females of two sizes?
Von Os. But these never grow.
Dov. Certainly not. Bees, however, hatched in very old cells, will be somewhat smaller: as each maggot leaves a skin behind which, though thinner than the finest silk, layer after layer, contracts the cells, and somewhat compresses the future bee.
Von Os. No ignorance is so contemptible as that of what is hourly before our eyes. I do not so much wonder at the fellow who inquired if America was a very large town, as at him who, finding the froth of the Cicada spumaria L. on almost every blade in his garden, wondered where were all the cuckoos that produced it.
Dov. They call it cuckoo-spit, from its plentiful appearance about the arrival of that bird.
Von Os. That is reasoning from analogy.
Dov. And yet I see not why the bird should be given to spitting; unless, indeed, he came from America.
Von Os. The vulgar, too, not only delight in wonders inexplicable, but have a rabid propensity to pry into futurity.
Dov. I believe that propensity is far from being confined to the vulgar.
Von Os. True; but not in so ridiculous a way: as they prophesy the future price of wheat from the number of lenticular knobs (containing the sporules) in the bottom of a cup of the fungus Nidularia.
Dov. The weather may be foretold with considerable certainty, for a short time, from many hygrometric plants, and the atmospheric influence on animals.
Von Os. And from Cloudology, by the changing of primary clouds into compound; and these resolving themselves into nimbi, for rain; or gathering into cumuli, for fair weather. This is like to become a very useful and pleasing science.
Dov. It is wonders of this kind, and forewarnings of this nature, that natural history offers to the contemplative mind: in the place of superstitious follies, and unavailing predictions, such as the foretelling of luck from the number or chattering of magpies; and the wonder how red clover changes itself into grass, as many a farmer at this moment believes.
Von Os. Linnaeus himself was a bit of a prophet; as, indeed, thus well he might; for experience and observation amount almost to the power of vatacination. In his Academic Aménities he says, "Deus, O.M. et Natura nihil frustra creaverit. Posteros tamen tot inventuros fore utilitates ex muscis arguor, quot ex reliquis vegetabilibus."
Dov. English it, Von Osdat; thou'rt a scholar.
Von Os. "God and Nature have made nothing in vain. Posterity may discover as much in mosses, as of utility in other herbs."
Dov. And, truly, so they may: one lichen is already used as a blessed medicine in asthma; and another to thicken milk, as a nutritive posset. And who, enjoying the rich productions of our present state of horticulture, can recur without wonder to the tables of our ancestors? They knew absolutely nothing of vegetables in a culinary sense; and as for their application in medicine, they had no power unless gathered under planetary influence, "sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."
Von Os. When Mercury was culminating, or Mars and Venus had got into the ninth house.
Dov. 'Tis curious to reflect, that at the vast baronial feasts, in the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors, where we read of such onslaught of beeves, muttons, hogs, fowl and fish, the courtly knights and beauteous dames had no other vegetable save bread—not even a potato!
Von Os.
"They carved at the meal with their gloves of steel,
And drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd."
Dov. And when the cloth was drawn—
Von Os. Cloth!—
Dov. They had scarce an apple to give zest to their wine.
Von Os. We read of roasted crabs; and mayhap they had baked acorns and pignuts.
Dov. Ha! ha! ha!—Caliban's dainties. Now we have wholesome vegetables almost for nothing, and pine-apples for a trifle. Thanks to Mr. Knight—push the bottle—here's to his health in a bumper.
Von Os. Who, walking on Chester walls in those days, and seeing the Brassica oleracea, where it grows in abundance, would have supposed that from it would spring cabbages as big as drums, and cauliflowers as florid as a bishop's wig?
Dov. Or cautiously chaumbering an acrid sloe, imagine it to be the parent of a green gage?
Von Os. This is the Education of Vegetables.
Dov. The March of Increment!