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j-ou Avould know liow, how to examine anything that was brought 

 before you, how to reason about it. If this has not been so, then 

 we may use the study of botany as a means to that end You can 

 begin by taking a plant — any plant will do, from a daisy to a 

 lily — and examining it. Look at it, observe its outside 

 characteristics — its form, colour, &c. Examine it more closely 

 take it to pieces, examine the parts, classify them, draw them, 

 write out your analysis, and you have carried out your first 

 exercise. Now take another plant. Examine it carefully as 

 before, and record your observations Now compare and contrast 

 the two specimens. See in what they resemble and in M'hat they 

 differ, and see if you can find any reason for the differences One 

 perhaps has a soft pulpy stem, while the stem of the other is stiff 

 and woody ; the former may be observed to grow rapidly, and at 

 the end of the season to wither and disappear ; the latter to grow 

 more slowly, and to persist. Try and formulate some theory, 

 some reason for the differences you observe. Never mind if you 

 arrive at a wrong conclusion, ten wrong conclusions are sometimes 

 l)etter educationally than one right one. It is astonishing how 

 reluctant most people are to draw conclusions of their own ; 

 they usually much prefer to hear the opinion of Professor X., or 

 the result of the observations of Mr. Y. And yet, I think, this 

 is the true test of whether an education has been successful or 

 not — ^.this power of reasoning — of suggesting from observed facts 

 the probable cause. I recall, as an instance of the opposite 

 condition, an old illiterate "Welshman, whom I knew in my 

 boyhood, who had theories most extraordinary on every 

 conceivable point. I remember his being greatly exercised as to 

 whether the wind caused the waves or the Avaves the wind. At 

 first he was much inclined to the idea that the Avaves were the 

 cause of the wind, as great waves could be caused by the internal 

 motion of the earth, — some of the greatest waves are — the great 

 tidal waves caused by volcanic eruptions. Afterwards, I remember, 

 he altered his opinion, because, as he agreed, when the wind 

 dropped the waves gradually drojiped, when the wind rose the 

 waves followed, and the effect could not precede the cause. Many 

 would have considered this old farmer as an uneducated man. He 

 certainly could not write English, and only read and understood 

 it imperfectly, so was heavily handicapped in the struggle after 

 knowledge, but he managed to attain to what in my mind, then 

 and now, was a by no means despicable stage of learning. 



By studying botany in this way, we get to know intimately 

 the various plants we have examined, and soon it becomes 

 interesting to compare our knowledge with that of others. And, 

 here, the first great difficulty comes in. As long as we are 



