at of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms
across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a
child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard
who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by
beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or
coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every
instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to
overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the
work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten
minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or
coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.

Botany, such as I have always considered it, and of which after my own
manner I began to become passionately fond, was precisely an idle study,
proper to fill up the void of my leisure, without leaving room for the
delirium of imagination or the weariness of total inaction. Carelessly
wandering in the woods and the country, mechanically gathering here a
flower and there a branch; eating my morsel almost by chance, observing a
thousand and a thousand times the same things, and always with the same
interest, because I always forgot them, were to me the means of passing
an eternity without a weary moment. However elegant, admirable, and
variegated the structure of plants may be, it does not strike an ignorant
eye sufficiently to fix the attention. The constant analogy, with, at
the same time, the prodigious variety which reigns in their conformation,
gives pleasure to those only who have already some idea of the vegetable
system. Others at the sight of these treasures of nature feel nothing
more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. They see nothing in detail
because they know not for what to look, nor do they perceive the whole,
having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which
overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer. I was arrived at
that happy point of knowledge, and my want of memory was such as
constantly to keep me there, that I knew little enough to make the whole
new to me, and yet everything that was necessary to make me sensible to
the beauties of all the parts. The different soils into which the
island, although little, was divided, offered a sufficient variety of
plants, for the study and amusement of my whole life. I was determined
not to