TALKS AFIELD. 



CVJ 



As the casual observer considers the plants 

 about him he is impressed by the great dif- 

 ferences between the common species, and 

 he is perplexed in an attempt to find any at- 

 tributes or characters which will serve to as- 

 sociate naturally one plant with another. 

 He may have a remote knowledge that bota- 

 nists have arranged plants into certain great 

 natural orders or families, but he is at a loss 

 to discover upon what characters these fam- 

 ilies rest. The sizes and shapes of plants, 

 the forms of their leaves, the shapes and col- 

 ors of their flowers, are so extremely varia- 

 ble that they appear to differ much more 

 than they agree. What similarity, other 

 than that which one shrub bears to another, 

 has the willow, laden with its " pussies " of 

 C^ silver and of gold, to the alders and the 

 poplars and the birches which grow in the 

 same tangle ? Or wherein lies the kinship 

 between the buttercup of the meadow and 



