8 PRACTICAL BOTANY. 



change as investigations bring to light new knowledge. 

 The development of plant life has not been direct from 

 the simple one-celled plants up to the complicated struc- 

 tures of the highest types, but different lines of develop- 

 ment have been followed, producing puzzling complications 

 when an attempt is made to locate the forms in a classifi- 

 cation. 



To gain a clear and consistent conception of plant life, 

 the logical order of study is from the lowest to the high- 

 est forms. Some teachers of undoubted authority do not, 

 however, consider this to be the best order for begin- 

 ners to meet the subject. The course of which the present 

 exercises form a part contemplates a considerable amount 

 of previous study of the gross morphology of seeds, roots, 

 stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits of the Flowering Plants, 

 with considerable attention to the divisions into groups 

 and classes, and with sufficient attention to analysis to 

 enable the student to find the names of plants. With 

 this preparation it seems to the writer that the student 

 can enter with profit upon a course which will give him a 

 general view of the whole plant world, beginning with 

 plants of the simplest organization. In the lowest forms 

 we come closest to the processes of nature, and, as we 

 advance in the study of the higher orders, our develop- 

 ment in knowledge follows nature in her development of 

 processes. In the lowest forms we study simple masses 

 of protoplasm ; as we go on from one simple plant to 

 another of somewhat higher type, we learn how, under 

 the mysterious laws of nature, the same elementary sub- 

 stances are combined to produce the myriads of Different 

 forms of plant structure. Botany becomes to us some- 

 thing very different from the assorting of various forms 

 and memorizing barbarous Latin and Greek names. The 

 value of the knowledge how to determine the name of a 

 plant by means of a key to the classification should not 



