OUTLINE OF STRUCTURAL BOTANY 51 
COLLECTING, DRYING AND MOUNTING OF PLANTS 
Many intelligent people believe that they have a genuine love for 
plants, yet they take a seeming pride in the fact that they know 
little or nothing of their natural relations or even their names, 
with few exceptions. 
It is impossible to have any true appreciation of any class of 
objects or beings of which we have only the most superficial knowl- 
edge. 
The pleasure experienced by one who has gained some acquaint- 
ance with a group of plants when such an one encounters a mem- 
ber of the group, which he or she has not met before, and the 
enjoyment of one who is prepared to make comparisons between the 
different species which may be encountered in a morning’s walk, 
quite surpasses the indifferent satisfaction of one who is pleased 
only by the color and form of a flower, while the body of the plant 
is almost or completely disregarded. 
Fortunately something beyond a vague undefined enjoyment of 
plants is now desired by a much larger class of people than was 
formerly interested in them. 
If the technical names of the common plants met with in our 
excursions through the fields and groves areslearned, one soon be- 
comes interested in finding that these names express relations 
between individuals of different aspect, which would otherwise be 
unsuspected. A knowledge of the common names is quite insuffi- 
cient to enable the casual observer to detect these relations. An 
illustration of this statement might be found in the case of two 
species of Cornus common in our region. The excursionist meets 
with a little plant two to four inches high with a white flower 
succeeded by a bunch of red berries. He knows the plant as the 
“Bunch berry.” Extending the walk, a tree twenty or thirty feet 
high is met with ; it is adorned with hundreds of large white 
flowers with green centers. The tree is the dogwood. In these 
names there are no suggestions of any relation between the little 
dwarf plant and the flower-bedecked tree. Should the excursionist, 
however, learn that the name of each is Cornus, he would be inter- 
ested to search for the resemblance and he would soon find that 
the “ flower ” in each case is a group of flowers arranged in very 
similar fashion, and that there is in fact a striking resemblance 
between the little herb and the spreading tree. 
Such relations and resemblances are to be observed on every 
