302 On the Natural Arrangement of Plants. 



ways in which this may be done: 1. Those who live among 

 plants, such as gardeners, may direct their attention in the 

 first instance to one or two plants in each group, instead of 

 learning the names of plants indiscriminately : 2. Those who 

 can afford to purchase specimens, figures, or to order sketches 

 of plants to be made for them, may make a similar discrimin- 

 ation, (seep. 221.): 3. Those who have a garden, however 

 small, may exemplify all the orders, suborders, and tribes of 

 the natural system, as far as it has hitherto been subdivided, 

 by 330 plants. Of these plants, 236 are hardy, 50 require 

 the protection of the hot-house, and 44 of the green-house. 

 These 94 exotics might be kept in a pit sunk in the ground 

 with hollow walls, and a hollow bottom ; the pots might be 

 plunged in tan or ashes, and the frost kept out by a lining of 

 dung next the end containing the hot-house plants, and by 

 ample nightly coverings in severe weather. In the summer 

 months they might be taken out and plunged in the open air 

 in their proper places in the natural system, as in the Jardin 

 des Plantes, and the pits employed in growing cucumbers or 

 melons. We repeat, that the smallest garden might maintain 

 a collection of this sort at a very trifling expense ; and we add, 

 that no other collection that could be introduced into a small 

 garden would be in so high a degree instructive, interesting, 

 and philosophical. Where there is room to admit of several 

 plants, instead of one of each group, especially of the hardy 

 kinds, the knowledge of each group will be increased, and 

 the interest created by the general effect considerably greater. 



When the importance of studying plants, with reference to 

 their natural groups, comes to be better understood, every 

 garden containing a collection will exhibit them so arranged ; 

 and parents who wish their children to acquire, at an easy 

 rate, a general knowledge of botany, will plant in their gar- 

 dens an index to the natural system, on the same principle 

 that they place an orrery in their school-room, or an encyclo- 

 paedia in their library. 



If it is found worth while to have a few plants, it will be 

 found worth while to have those few the most important in 

 point of scientific interest that can be selected from the whole 

 vegetable kingdom, viz. the types or representations of the 

 different orders and tribes which compose that kingdom. This 

 is to prefer a superior principle of selection to an ordinary 

 principle, to exhibit a taste of the highest and most intellectual 

 kind, instead of the inferior motives of show, extent, or even 

 rarity and high price. Not that these motives are to be 

 despised, because they are valuable to begin with, and may 



