"
23. Now, at last, I see my way to useful summary of the whole, which I had
better give in a separate chapter: and will try in future to do the
preliminary work of elaboration of the sap from my authorities, above
shown, in its process, to the reader, without making so much fuss about it.
But, I think in this case, it was desirable that the floods of pros-, par-,
peri-, dia-, and circumlocution, through which one has to wade towards any
emergent crag of fact in modern scientific books, should for once be seen
in the wasteful tide of them; that so I might finally pray the younger
students who feel, or remember, their disastrous sway, to cure themselves
for ever of the fatal habit of imagining that they know more of anything
after naming it unintelligibly, and thinking about it impudently, than they
did by loving sight of its nameless being, and in wise confession of its
boundless mystery.
* * * * *
In re-reading the text of this number I can secure my young readers of some
things left doubtful, as, for instance, in their acceptance of the word
'Monacha,' for the flower described in the sixth chapter. I have used it
now habitually too long to part with it myself, and I think it will be
found serviceable and pleasurable by others. Neither shall I now change the
position of the Draconidae, as suggested at p. 118, but keep all as first
planned.
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