SUPPLEMENT. 
THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS.* 
By CuHartes Lours Potzarp. 
INTRODUCTION. 
A question frequently asked by those interested in nature and 
nature-study is how a knowledge of plants may be obtained without 
the expenditure of- time and trouble involved in a complete course of 
systematic and structural botany. It is a problem seemingly difficult 
of solution, but one that nevertheless commands attention,- since the 
highest province of all science is the exposition of the facts of nature. 
Critical and technical stndy of any branch of biology is valueless if 
the world at large is not to profit hy the researches of the scholar. 
Many attempts have been made to meet this growing demand for 
popular botany. There are countless volumes designed to instruct the 
layman and to give him a casual acquaintance with the flowers of field 
and wayside. Most of them administer, under the sugar-coated guise 
of popular language, a bitter pill of meaningless names and descrip- 
tions, while the dose is often made more unpalatable by numerous and 
wholly superfluous extracts from the poets. The folk-lore ot plants is 
a distinct branch of botany, and a book which aims to describe the 
plants themselves should avoid all digressions. In an effort to simplify 
the technical language of the science, the device of classifying plants 
by artificial methods, such as the color of their flowers, the situations 
in which they grow, etc., has been attempted, but the unwary reader, 
in pursuing this course, is likely to be led into snares. Color and 
habitat are variable characteristics, and acquaintance with a given plant 
is to be gained only by familiarity with its appearance and an under- 
standing of its relationships. There is often a clear conception of in- 
dividual genera, even among those who have no comprehension of how 
genera are grouped. Thus nearly everyone can recognize an oak tree, 
the oaks forming a very distinct natural genus, while most persons can 
*A series of articles under the above caption was begun in the first volume 
of THE PLANT WORLD, but extended only through the more important families of 
the Monocotyledons. The treatment at that time was necessarily very brief, and 
in the interests of completeness it has been deemed advisible to start the series 
anew, including illustrations and much additional text, 
