254 AN OWL'S gpan HOLIDAY. 
ticable to “ analyze,”’ and so to identify plants 
simply by the stem and foliage, — although I 
remember to have been told, to be sure, of a 
young lady who professed that at her college 
the instruction in botany was so thorough that 
it was possible for the student to name any 
plant in the world from seeing only a single 
leaf! But her college was not.Harvard, and 
Professor Gray has probably never so much as 
heard of such an admirable method. 
On the whole, it is good to have the curios- 
ity piqued with here and there a vegetable 
stranger, — its name and even its family rela- 
tionship a mystery. The leaf is nothing ex- 
traordinary, perhaps, yet who knows but that 
the bloom may be of the rarest beauty? Or the 
leaf is of a gracious shape and texture, but how 
shall we tell whether the flower will correspond 
with it? No; we must do with them as with 
chance acquaintances of our own kind. The 
man looks every inch a gentleman; his face 
alone seems a sufficient guaranty of good-breed- 
ing and intelligence ; but none the less, — and 
not forgetting that charity thinketh no evil, — 
we shall do well to wait till we have heard him 
talk and seen how he will behave, before we put 
a final label upon him. Wait for the blossom — 
and the fruit (the blossom zs the fruit in its 
first stage); for the old rule is still the true 
