THE STUDY OF PLANTS 33 



do your own thinking. The structure and the behavior of 

 plants you can observe for yourself. You can think about 

 what you see, and you can write down your thoughts and 

 observations in the notebook. Most of the important 

 things, even in science, you will learn from books or from 

 other people. You do not have time to find out very much 

 for yourself. You must take " short-cuts " to knowledge. 

 Yet it is of extreme importance that, with respect to a few 

 things at least, you do find out for yourself. Your power 

 to find out for yourself and to judge for yourself must be 

 developed, for it is a power of which you will have great 

 need. So, in the study of plants, you are to find some 

 things out for yourself. You are to have an excellent op- 

 portunity to observe, to reason, and to come to conclusions. 

 But all your observing and your thinking will be of much 

 less value if you do not make careful record of it in a note- 

 book. Thoughts come to us as we write them down, and 

 they are of value only as we express them. Thus the note- 

 book is an opportunity you must not neglect. If you 

 force yourself to observe, and to think, and to record your 

 observations and your thoughts, that work will put power 

 into your brain as starch puts stiffening into a limp rag. 

 If you neglect such an opportunity, you are in a fair way 

 to have a limp-rag sort of brain all your days. 



It is when you get to notebook work that you begin to get 

 the most important results from your observations and 

 your thought. Pen and paper are mechanical aids with- 

 out which good thinking loses much of its value. It 

 vanishes like a fog and is lost unless you make a record of 

 it. Thinking is only a misty sort of thing at best until 

 you set it down in black and white. Once you learn to do 

 that, you have begun to realize on the product of your 



