THE 



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Maech, 1861. 



^NIsTJALS are mostly so fugacious in habit that the real beauty 

 of many of them is under-estimated, and one great 

 use of them ahnost wholly overlooked. There is no 

 more agreeable or more instructive method of study- 

 ing botany than by growing annual plants, selecting 

 specimens in bloom and seed to drj- for the hortus 

 siccus, and carefully determining their several 

 stinictural peculiarities as illustrations of orders and genera. 

 A considei'able number of the most important orders have their 

 representative^; in annuals, and the opportunity which cultiva- 

 tion affords of watching a plant through all the phases of its de- 

 velopment to the final ripening of its seed is far superior for 

 those who desire full and accurate knowledge to all possible col- 

 lections of wild specimens, no matter how many countries and climates may 

 be laid under tribute. The student of botany will find it slow work to trust 

 alone to books and dried specimens ; but, with the assistance of a garden, a 

 border, and an assortment of seeds, he may make progress with extraordinary 

 rapidity, and this class of plants will tell the whole story of their lives 

 and habits in the space of a few months ; and, while representing a vast 

 number of orders, tribes, and families, furnish, at the same time, an in- 

 telligible key to the geographical distribution of plants. Take the Cali- 

 fornian sorts for an example. There is the gaudy Escholtzia, representing 

 the firaily of poppies ; the Clarkia, Eucharidium, and Godetia, representing 

 the (Enotheras ; and the Gilias, repi'esenting Polemonium ; Clintonia, the 

 Lobelia tribe ; Eutoca and I^emophila, the Hydrophyllum tribe ; Lc-p- 

 tosiplion, the Phlox trihe ; Limnanthes, the tribe bearing its own name; 

 Monardella undulata, the Labiate tribe, and others which belong to larger 

 orders of which representatives are more abundant. The cruciform and 

 composite flowers crowd into our lists of annuals ; the huge order of 

 Pianunculaceas offers Delphinium and Nigella ; the Papaveraeeae, the gaudy 

 poppies, of which the peony-flowered poppy is one of the most beautiful 

 of all our garden flowers. Platystemon Californicum comes also into this 

 group, along with Escholtzia and Eoemeria hybrida, which is pretty, but 

 Bhort-lived. Of the Fumitories we have Corydalis glauca ; of Cappari- 

 TOL. IT. — NO. lu. » 



