this instance, was not precisely what they needed.

It may be, therefore, that browsing is productive of some good result, and
that it fails to effect some other, perhaps some higher, result which its
critics have wrongly fixed upon as the one desirable thing in this
connection.

When a name embodies a figure of speech, we may often learn something by
following up the figure to see how far it holds good. What does an animal
do, and what does it not do, when it "browses"? In the first place it eats
food--fresh, growing food; but, secondly, it eats this food by cropping
off the tips of the herbage, not taking much at once, and again, it moves
about from place to place, eating now here and now there and then making
selection, from one motive or another, but presumably following the
dictates of its own taste or fancy. What does it not do? First, it does
not, from choice, eat anything bad. Secondly, it does not necessarily
consume all of its food in this way. If it finds a particularly choice
spot, it may confine its feeding to that spot; or, if its owner sees fit,
he may remove it to the stable, where it may stand all day and eat what he
chooses to give it. The benefits of browsing are, first, the nourishment
actually derived from the food taken, coupled with the fact that it is
taken in small quantities, and in great variety; and secondly, the
knowledge of good spots, obtained from the testing of one spot after
another, throughout the whole broad pasture.

Now I submit that our figure of speech holds good in all these
particulars. The literary "browser" partakes of his mental food from books
and is thereby nourished and stimulated; he takes it here and there in
brief quantities, moving from section to section and from shelf to shelf,
selecting choice morsels of literature as fancy may dictate. He does not,
if he is a healthy reader, absorb voluntarily anything that will hurt him,
and this method of literary absorption does not preclude other methods of
mental nourishment. He may like a book so much that he proceeds to devour
it whole, or his superiors in knowledge may remove him to a place where
necessary mental food is administered more or less forcibly. And having
gone so far with our comparison, we shall make no mistake if we go a
little further and say that the benefits of browsing to the reader are
twofold, as they are to the material feeder--the absorption of actual
nutriment in his own wilful, wayward manner--a li