they are merely such notes as any working botanical collector is able
to supply in abundance. Mainly content with the pursuit as an outdoor
occupation, with such an amount of home work as was necessary to
determine the names and affinities of the species, Mr. Mill never
penetrated deeply into the philosophy of botany, so as to take rank
among those who have, like Herbert Spencer, advanced that science by
original work either of experiment or generalization, or have entered
into the battle-field where the great biological questions of the day
are being fought over. The writer of this notice well remembers
meeting, a few years since, the (at that time) parliamentary logician,
with his trousers turned up out of the mud, and armed with the tin
insignia of his craft, busily occupied in the search after a
marsh-loving rarity in a typical spongy wood on the clay to the north
of London.

But however followed, the investigation of nature cannot fail to
influence the mind in the direction of a more just appreciation of the
necessity of system in arrangement, and of the principles which must
regulate all attempts to express notions of system in a
classification. Traces of this are not difficult to find in Mr. Mill's
writings. It may be safely stated, that the chapters on classification
in the "Logic" would not have taken the form they have, had not the
writer been a naturalist as well as a logician. The views expressed so
clearly in these chapters are chiefly founded on the actual needs
experienced by the systematic botanist; and the argument is largely
sustained by references to botanical systems and arrangements. Most
botanists agree with Mr. Mill in his objections to Dr. Whewell's views
of a natural classification by resemblance to "types," instead of in
accordance with well-selected characters; and indeed the whole of
these chapters are well deserving the careful study of naturalists,