40 BOMBAY NATUBAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



friend, I suppose, of many besides myself, it would have been most 

 useful, and would have given any young student a good start; but 

 it is quite different. 



I have not set down this list of difficulties merely for the sake of 

 making a wail, or to induce young botanists to give up their hopes 

 and their studies till better days come. But I lately came upon some 

 thing which I thought might help some of those who are painfully 

 struggling (as I did for many years) to identify the plants they 

 meet with one of Dalzell and Gibson, with the help of other books, 

 like the invaluable work of Roxburgh, which contains just a few 

 Bombay plants. The work I mean is Rousseau's (i Lettres Elemen- 

 tairessurla Botaniqne." (Vol. 4 of Rousseau's Works, Lahure's edn., 

 Paris, 1857.) He began by simply showing the difference between 

 a monopetalous and a polypetalous corolla, and then chose six of the 

 largest orders to explain and illustrate. He took, of course, those of 

 the large orders which are most fully represented in France, three 

 monopetelous and three polypetalous. Thejr were (in his order) 

 Liliaccce, Cruciferce, L zguminosce, Labiatce, Umbclliferce and Composite. 

 The fourth is what I shall have chiefly to speak about, so I will here 

 only say that it was not the order Lahiatce, but a group ; the name 

 of 'Fleurs en gueule' being given by Rousseau to all flowers having a 

 two-lipped corolla and didynamous stamens. Now, of the other 

 orders described by Rousseau and mentioned above, Nos. ], 2 and 

 5 are not sufficiently common in Westernlndia to serve our purpose, 

 Lcgumiuosa 1 and Composite are, and it would be easy to take, three 

 other orders (or groups of orders) common here, and thus to describe 

 generally within a very reasonable compass and in a simple classifica- 

 tion a very considerable portion of all the plants of the Presidency. 

 Rousseau's idea was that if the student learnt up these great orders 

 to begin with, so as to know the species common in his own coun- 

 try, and to be able to recognise other species of the same orders 

 when found elsewhere, this would give him such a start that he 

 would have no difficulty in going on, and would little by little learn 

 to distinguish most of the orders. It will be easily seen that such 

 a system as this is quite opposed to the ordinary modes of teaching 

 scientific botany, and may be objected to accordingly. But the 

 answer to that is that the ordinary modes of teaching imply that the 

 student will be able either to study the science in a systematic way 

 more or less at his leisure, or else to have a good supply of scientific 

 books to refer to. That this last condition cannot be fulfilled in 



