Lntroductory. 17 
we secure finer flowers than if we gather seeds without re- 
gard to parentage. 
20. Breeding in plants and animals is reproduction, 
watched over and directed by man, with reference to securing 
special qualities in the offspring. It is based on the princi- 
ple that the peculiarities of the parent or parents tend to 
be reproduced, and may be intensified, in the descendents. 
But before we are prepared for the study of breeding, we 
need to know something of the principles of classification. 
91. Classification is the arrangement of the different 
kinds of plants and animals into groups and families based 
on individual resemblances. If we examine plants as they 
are growing in nature, we may observe a, that there are 
many plants of the same kind, and 6, that there are many 
kinds of plants. The different plants or animals of the 
same kind are called individuals, and, in general, we may say 
that the different kinds of plants or animals are called 
species (spe’-cies). But these simple distinctions are not suffi- 
cient to satisfy the needs of natural history. We might say, 
for example, that the violet is one kind of plant and the oak 
is another, which is true; but there are also different kinds 
of violets and different kinds of oaks. We might say that 
the apple is one kind of plant and the pear is another, but 
there are different kinds of apples, as the crab apple and the 
common apple, and there are different kinds of crab apples, 
and of common apples. We must not only arrange the 
kinds of plants into groups, but we must have groups of 
different grades. For example, botanists call each distinct 
kind of plant as the sugar maple, the white oak and the 
dandelion, a species. Then the species that rather closely 
resemble each other, as the sugar maple and the soft maple; 
