THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 147 



find a pigeon-hole for every plant on the face of the earth ; and if 

 plants closely related get into pigeon-holes far apart it cannot be 

 helped, and at all events we know where to find them whenever 

 they are needed for a better arrangement. 



Now this better arrangement the Natural system purposes to 

 effect by grouping plants in orders, families, classes and so forth, 

 according to their obvious affinities, so far as those affinities can be 

 understood. Thus, to begin with, it is a sensible procedure to 

 group all the buttercups in one order, and, as above remarked, in all 

 the now-accepted natural systems, the Banunculacece, the buttercup 

 or crowfoot tribe, constitute the first order, and the one which there- 

 fore demaods the first attention of the student. In this order we 

 find the buttercups, the clematises, the anemones, the adonis, the 

 globe flowers, the hellebores, the columbines, the larkspurs, the 

 aconites, the paeonies, and a few other less important tribes. They 



3ACE VIEW OF BLOSSOM OF COMMON BUTTEBCTTP. 



(Ranunculus repens). 

 a, petal; b, flower-cup, in five sections; c, peduncle. 



are grouped under Banunculacece because of certain properties 

 which they have in common. Thus the flower of any one of them 

 has usually a calyx of five or six sepals; a corolla of five or six 

 petals ; many stamens inserted on the receptacle ; many ovaries ; 

 watery (as distinct from milky) juice ; acrid and poisonous proper- 

 ties. You may judge by these few particulars that in the study of 

 the natural system every separate fact becomes in its turn a key, a 

 royal road, a "finger-post, or a magnetic telegraph to some other fact, 

 or perhaps to a bigger bundle of tacts than the memory can catch 

 hold of at a first effort, though they may be most clearly brought 

 before it by the aid of principles that appear to be irrefragable. 

 We must not, however, consider it a fault of the natural system 

 that it oilers us at every intellectual meal more than we can hope to 

 digest, because we might apply that principle to material things, 

 and blame the butcher if he ever sent a joint in which there was an 

 ounce of meat more than could be eaten at one sitting. 



We have many more wpecies of crowfoots than the beginner in 

 botany would imagine. The most plentiful of all is the Creeping 



May. 



