BOTANY 



855 



BOTANY 



SOME MEMBERS OP THE PULSE FAMILY 



classification were made, until, with Linnaeus, 

 in the eighteenth century, the period of waver- 

 ing and uncertainty came to an end, and 

 botany began to be considered an exact science. 

 From the time of that great naturalist, looked 

 upon as the founder of modern botany, classi- 

 fication has grown constantly more elaborate 

 and more exact (see LINNAEUS). 



Place of Botany in Schools. To-day botany 

 has a regular place among the sciences studied, 

 but under its technical name is to be found 

 only in high schools and colleges, for the classi- 

 fications, the close examination of plant parts, 

 the long-sounding Latin names are too difficult 

 for young children. But these do not make 

 up the whole of botany, and children are by no 

 means cut off from the enjoyment of this sub- 

 ject which seems of all the sciences the one 

 designed to appeal to them. The simplest 

 elements of botany are being grasped by any 

 child who learns to know a buttercup by name, 

 to tell a petunia from a morning-glory, or to 

 distinguish poison ivy that he may avoid it in 

 the woods, and few are the schools which do 

 not include some study of plant life. In the 

 lower grades this is called nature study, but 

 it is the real beginning of botany (see NATURE 

 STUDY). 



Of Interest to Boys and Girls. Very many 

 things which come under the head of botany 

 are so curious and interesting that no child 

 who approaches them correctly can fail to find 

 in them as much pleasure as in a story. For 

 instance, there is the marvelous way in which 

 each plant knows how to draw from the soil 

 just the elements it needs to make it what it is. 

 A story every child loves is that old Arabian 

 Nights tale of the gigantic genie which came 

 out of the jar, causing the man who watched 

 the process to wonder and to doubt the evi- 

 dence of his senses that anything so huge could 

 emerge from anything so small. But all over 

 the land, in wery garden, a more wonderful 

 thing happens hundreds of times every year. 

 One of the tiniest of all seeds is the poppy 

 seed little more than a grain of dust it seems. 

 But when it is planted in the dark ground, it 

 chooses just the right kind of food, until pres- 

 ently there stands in the garden above the spot 

 where it was placed one of the most beautiful 

 of all plants dusty-looking, gray-green leaves, 

 straight, slender flower-stems, and crowning all, 

 the gorgeous blossoms with their crinkled satin 

 petals all of which must have been present, in 

 some form, in the tiny seed. 



And close beside the poppy, perhaps, if the 



