34 JNTKODTJCTION, 



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 discover their names. The whole are arranged into classes, 

 genera, and species, according to the Linnsean system. We 

 shall suppose that a person commencing the study of British 

 plants, and having made himself acquainted with the different 

 parts of vegetables described 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 nu- 

 merous, 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 attached 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 



