182 HOW TO STUDY PLANTS. [LESSON 30. 



Manual of Rocky Mountain Plants ; or, as covering the whole 

 ground as to common plants, and including also all the common 

 cultivated plants, Gray's Field, Forest, and Garden Botany, which is 

 particularly arranged as the companion of the present work; that 

 containing brief botanical descriptions of the plants, and this the 

 explanation of their general structure, and of the technical terms 

 employed in describing them. To express clearly the distinctions 

 which botanists observe, and which furnish the best marks to know 

 a plant by, requires a good many technical terms, or words used 

 with a precise meaning. These, as they are met with, the student 

 should look out in the Glossary at the end of this volume. The 

 terms in common use are not so numerous as they would at first 

 appear to be. With practice they will soon become so familiar as 

 to give very little trouble. And the application of botanical de- 

 scriptive language to the plants themselves, indicating all their 

 varieties of form and structure, is an excellent discipline for the 

 mind, equal, if not in some respects superior, to that of learning a 

 classical language. 



525. The following illustrations and explanations of the way to 

 use the descriptive work are for the Manual of Rocky Mountain 

 Plants. This and the Lessons, bound together in a single compact 

 volume, will serve the whole purpose of all but advanced students, 

 teachers, and working botanists. Thus equipped, we proceed to 



526. The Analysis of a Plant, A Buttercup will serve as well as 

 any. Some species or other may be found in blossom throughout 

 nearly the whole spring and summer; and, except at the very be- 

 ginning of the season, the fruit, more or less developed, may be 

 gathered with the blossom. To a full knowledge of a plant the 

 fruit is essential, although the name may almost always be ascer- 

 tained without it. This common yellow flower being under exam- 

 ination, we are to refer the plant to its proper class and order or 

 family. The families are so numerous, and so generally distinguish- 

 able only by a combination of a considerable number of marks, that 

 the student must find his way to them by means of a contrivance 

 called an Analytical Key. This Key begins on page ix. 



527. It takes note of the most comprehensive possible division 

 of the plants considered in this Manual, namely, " those with flow- 

 ers and seeds," and " those without true flowers or seeds." To the 

 first of these, the great series of PH^ENOGAMOUS or FLOWERING 

 PLANTS, the plant under examination obviously belongs. 



