36 INTRODUCTION. 



METHOD OF EXAMINING PLANTS. 



IN the following arrangement of British Plants, there is a brief 

 description of each species, by an attentive comparison of which 

 with the plants that one may pick up, he will be enabled to dis- 

 cover their names. The whole are arranged into classes, genera, 

 and species, according to the Linnaean system. We shall suppose 

 that a person commencing the study of British plants, and having 

 made himself acquainted with the different parts of vegetables de- 

 scribed and illustrated by figures in the preceding pages, falls in 

 with a specimen of the plant figured in pi. x. fig. 156. 



He has first to glance over the whole plant, beginning with the 

 root and examining all its parts in succession. He will thus find 

 that the root is fibrous; the stem creeping at the base, simple, 

 ascending obliquely, and having a line of hairs on each side; the 

 leaves egg-shaped, sessile, wrinkled, deeply serrated, and more or 

 less hairy, the clusters of flowers lateral, axillar, rising higher 

 than the stem, and having their stalks hairy all round, with lance- 

 shaped bracteas ; the flowers numerous, with a calyx consisting of 

 four lance-shaped segments, a very beautiful, large, bright-blue 

 corolla, marked with darker lines, and pale-purple on the back, 

 monopetalous, wheel-shaped, divided into four segments, of which 

 the upper is the largest, and the lower the least; two anthers at- 

 tached to the corolla ; a germen crowned by a single thread-shaped 

 style ; and an inversely heart-shaped, compressed capsule, of two 

 cells and four valves, containing numerous roundish seeds. 



As there are two stamens, the young botanist turns over the 

 leaves to the class Diandria ; and as there is only one style, he 

 refers the plant to the order Monogynia. In the table of short 

 essential generic characters, he finds that there are ten genera 

 mentioned, namely : L/gustrum, Fraxinus, Veronica, Pingui- 



