Notes on thk Study of Botany. 249 



given off. It will thus be seen, as tersely put by Mr. L. H. Baileyjr. 

 " If the leaves are the lungs of the plant because they breathe, they are 

 more emphatically the stomachs of the plant because they assitnilate and 

 tliqest." 



It is now in order for the student to learn something of class- 

 ification, as it is by this means he is enabled to analyze and recognize 

 by name the plants with which he meets, thus to avail himself of all 

 that has been recorded concerning them by botanists before him. 



To the ordinary observer plants differ so much from one another 

 that he can see no points of resemblance which could connect them 

 naturally. For example, what likeness is there between the common 

 strawberry and the mountain ash ? Yet both belong to the rose family. 

 Notwithstanding this great external dissimilarity, the botanist can 

 readily point out in both, characters which at once stamp them as 

 closely akin. The points which determine the relationship of plants 

 are not confined to any one part of them ; they may exist in the roots, 

 leaves, flowers or fruits, but the natural system now in use aims to 

 bring together those which most closely resemble each other in all 

 these particulars, laying especial stress on the flowers and fruit. In this 

 respect it differs from the Linnaean and all other artifical systems, 

 which took up a certain set of organs and based kindredship on those 

 alone. 



The means by which a plant reproduces itself and is prevented 

 from becoming extinct is evidently its most important and essential 

 part, and it is upon this the fruit, that the vegetable kingdom is 

 primarily divided, viz, into flowerless plants, such as ferns, mosses and 

 fungi, and flowering plants, such as herbs, shrubs and trees. The 

 former reproduce themselves by spores, which are commonly simple, 

 minute cells and contain no embyro : the latter by seeds, which are 

 embyro plantlets enclosed in an integument. Among flowering plants, 

 increase in the diameter of the stem forms the first basis of division. 

 There are two general methods in which this increase takes place. In 

 the one case the woody tissue is scattered as separate threads through- 

 out the whole stem, and the increase in diameter is by the interposition 

 of new woody threads which stretch its surface ; while in the other case, 



