FLOWERING PLANTS INTRODUCTORY in 



The apparatus needed for the dissection and examination of 

 the plant is very simple. A sharp penknife, kept for the purpose, 

 or one or two scalpels with straight blades, are needed to dissect 

 flowers, buds, etc. Another essential both for examining plants 

 at home and in the field is a magnifying-glass or pocket-lens. 

 This need not be of an expensive type ; for all ordinary purposes 

 the single or triple lenses in vulcanite mounts, sold for the purpose 

 for half a crown or less, will do admirably. A pair of forceps 

 for holding small parts of the plant when examining them, and 

 one or two needles mounted in wooden handles, are useful additions 

 to the furniture of the working table. 



To record what has been seen and to assist accurate observa- 

 tion, it is necessary to make notes, and especially to draw the 

 parts of the plant. For this purpose the student should be 

 provided with a note-book of good paper without lines, with 

 pencils of various degrees of hardness, including a hard one 

 for making definite outlines, and with indiarubber. The 

 drawings that should be made are not pretty pictures of the 

 whole plant, but detailed outline drawings of the separate parts. 

 Accuracy rather than beauty is the object of drawings for this 

 purpose. All the drawings should be on a good scale, small 

 parts being drawn several times their actual size to allow of 

 the details made out by the lens being recorded. Clear outline 

 drawings are the most useful, and shading should only be employed 

 when it is really necessary to make the form clear. Drawings 

 of this kind are of special value for the teacher, since they are 

 an excellent preparation for illustrating the subject on the black- 

 board. Besides the value of these drawings, as a record of what 

 the student has seen for himself, the attention to details which 

 is necessitated by making a good drawing leads to features being 

 noticed that would otherwise be passed over. Thus even when 

 the drawing is not preserved the making of it is a valuable assist- 

 ance in accurate observation. The drawings should not be crowded 

 in the drawing-book. A brief statement of what is represented 

 should be written beneath each, and all the parts represented 

 in the drawing should be carefully labelled. If this labelling 

 is done fully it almost does away with the need of making detailed 

 descriptive notes, though, when the plant has been fully studied, 



