FROM CLASS TO NATURAL ORDER. 2*7 



get " Withering's Handbook to the Linnaean System," 

 I think you will find it useful. It will often help you 

 to make out a plant with which you may be puzzled, 

 as the stamens and pistil are generally easy to 

 examine. The descriptions also of the plants are 

 full. Remember, however, that the natural system 

 is the best and the most interesting, and that 

 is the one- which you must take pains to learn 

 and which you should generally use. So we leave 

 the . artificial system. For what I want you now 

 to remember is the main framework of the natural 

 system. The classes, the natural orders, the genera, 

 and the species. Then in due course with a book in 

 which plants are described, arranged, and named (a 

 flora) you will be able to take a plant and find out 

 first the class to which it belongs, then its natural order, 

 then its genus, then its species, and so you will find its 

 general description and its name. 



For you remember, I hope, what I told you about 

 the names of plants. Every plant has two names, 

 one its generic or family name, the other its specific 

 or individual name, by which the members of the 

 family are distinguished from one another (Ch. XI.) 

 Now you know that in English we put the individual 

 name first, and the family name second ; we say Red 

 Clover to distinguish it from White Clover, just as we 

 say John Brown, to distinguish him from Robert Brown. 

 But the scientific names of plants are in Latin, and 

 then the family or generic name comes first, and the 



