254 AN OWL'S HEAD HOLIDAY. 



ticable to " analyze," and so to identify plants 

 simply by the stem and foliage, although I 

 remember to have been told, to be sure, of a 

 young lady who professed that at her college 

 the instruction in botany was so thorough that 

 it was possible for the student to name any 

 plant in the world from seeing only a single 

 leaf ! But her college was not Harvard, and 

 Professor Gray has probably never so much as 

 heard of such an admirable method. 



On the whole, it is good to have the curios- 

 ity piqued with here and there a vegetable 

 stranger, its name and even its family rela- 

 tionship a mystery. The leaf is nothing ex- 

 traordinary, perhaps, yet who knows but that 

 the bloom may be of the rarest beauty? Or the 

 leaf is of a gracious shape and texture, but how 

 shall we tell whether the flower will correspond 

 with it ? No ; we must do with them as with 

 chance acquaintances of our own kind. The 

 man looks every inch a gentleman ; his face 

 alone seems a sufficient guaranty of good-breed- 

 ing and intelligence ; but none the less, and 

 not forgetting that charity thinketh no evil, 

 we shall do well to wait till we have heard him 

 talk and seen how he will behave, before we put 

 a final label upon him. Wait forHhe blossom 

 and the fruit (the blossom is the fruit in its 

 first stage) ; for the old rule is still the true 



