As soon as the summer course begins, the Botanical Lectures commence with it, and the polite Company of Apothecaries courteously request the student’s acceptance of a ticket of admission to the lectures, at their garden at Chelsea. As these commence somewhere about eight in the morning, of course he must get up in the middle of the night to be there; and consequently he attends very often, of course. But the botanical excursions that take place every Saturday from his own school are his especial delight. He buys a candle-box to contain all the chickweed, chamomiles, and dandelions he may collect, and slinging it over his shoulder with his pocket-handkerchief, he starts off in company with the Professor and his fellow-herbalists to Wandsworth Common, Battersea Fields, Hampstead Heath, or any other favourite spot which the cockney Flora embellishes with her offspring.
The conduct of medical students on botanical excursions generally appears in various phases. Some real lovers of the study, pale men in spectacles, who wear shoes and can walk for ever, collect every weed they drop upon, to which they assign a most extraordinary name, and display it at their lodgings upon cartridge paper, with penny pieces to keep the leaves in their places as they dry. Others limit their collections to stinging-nettles, which they slyly insert into their companions’ pockets, or long bulrushes, which they tuck under the collars of their coats; and the remainder turn into the first house of public entertainment they arrive at on emerging from the smoke of London to the rural districts, and remain all day absorbed in the mysteries of ground billiards and knock-‘em-downs, their principal vegetable studies being confined to lettuces, spring onions, and water-cresses. But all this is very proper—we mean the botanical part of the story—for the knowledge of the natural class and order of a buttercup must be of the greatest service to a practitioner in after-life in treating a case of typhus fever or ruptured blood-vessel. At some of the Continental Hospitals, the pupil’s time is wasted at the bedside of the patient, from which he can only get practical information. How much better is the primrose-investigating curriculum of study observed at our own medical schools!
SOME THINGS TO WHICH THE IRISH WOULD NOT SWEAR.
MR. GROVE.—This insufferably ignorant, and, therefore, insolent magisterial cur, who has recently made himself an object of unenviable notoriety, by asserting that “the Irish would swear anything,” has shown himself to be as stupid as he is malignant. Would, for instance, the most hard-mouthed Irishman in existence venture to swear that—
- Mr. Grove is a gentleman; or that—
- Sir Francis Burdett has brought honour to his grey hairs; or that—
- Colonel Sibthorp has more brains than beard; or that—
- Sir Robert Peel feels for anybody but himself; or that—
- Peter Borthwick was listened to with attention; or that—
- Sir Peter Laurie’s wisdom cannot be estimated; or that—
- Sir Edward George Erle Lytton Bulwer thinks very small beer of himself; or that—
- The Earl of Coventry carries a vast deal of sense under his hat; or that—
- Mr. Roebuck is the pet of the Times; or, in short, that—
- The Tories are the best and most popular governors that England ever had.
If “the Irish would swear” to the above, we confess they “would swear anything.”
COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE THEM.
SIR JAMES CLARK is in daily attendance at the Palace. We suppose that he is looking out for a new berth under Government.