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Botanical, like human physiognomy, may frequently afford an insight into character, but it is very often a fallacious index. With regard to the indications of Smell and Taste, it may be observed that in the examination of an unknown substance we instinctively apply to these senses for information respecting its properties. It is certainly reasonable to suppose, that those bodies which produce upon the organs of taste a sensible, astringent, or pungent effect, may occasion an impression, corresponding in degree upon the stomach or intestines, which are but an extension of the same structure. But what numerous exceptions are there to such a law? nay, some of the most poisonous substances affect in a very slight degree the organs of taste, especially those that belong to the mineral kingdom, as Arsenious Acid, Oxyd of Antimony, Calomel, &c.; yet some of these are, perhaps, but apparent exceptions, depending upon the degree of solubility which they possess, in consequence of which their energies are not developed until they have traversed a considerable portion of mucous surface. Nor ought it to be forgotten, that cultivation and artificial habits may have blunted the natural susceptibility of our organs, and in some instances changed and depraved their functions: certain qualities for instance are so strongly connected with each other by the chain of association, that by presenting only one to the mind, the other links follow in succession.^[89] It has been remarked, that persons in social life, are more affected by vegetable odours, while the Savage smells better the putrid and fœtid exhalations of animal bodies:^[90] thus the people of Kamskatcha, did not smell the perfume of a vegetable Essence (Aqua Melissæ,) but they discovered by their olfactory sense, a rotten fish, or a stranded whale at a considerable distance.^[91] There is no sense more under the dominion of imagination, or more liable to be perverted by education, than those of taste and smell; we are also liable to form unjust prejudices from the indications of colour; for particular colours, from the influence of hidden associations, are not unfrequently the exciting cause of agreeable or unpleasant impressions. I have met with a person who regards green food, if it be of an animal nature, with unconquerable aversion and disgust, indeed an idea of unwholesomeness has not unfrequently been attached to this colour, without the least foundation of truth; the bones of the Gar fish, or Sea Needle, (Esox Helone,) have been deemed unwholesome from the circumstance of their turning green on being boiled, although not a single instance can be adduced in which that fish ever occasioned any harm. I have met with persons who have been made violently sick from eating the green part of the oyster;^[92] an effect which can have no other cause than that of unjust prejudice; these examples are sufficient to shew, with what caution such indications respecting the medicinal qualities of bodies are to be received.