CHAPTER Il: THE RELATION OF FUNGI 
TO OTHER PLANTS 
A CLASSIFICATION or orderly arrangement of material collected 
for study is indispensable to true pleasure and profit. The nature 
student must ciassify both his specimens and the knowledge he 
may obtain about them ; for, as Spen- 
cer has said, ‘‘ When a man’s knowl- 
edge is not in order, the more of it 
he has the greater will be his confu- 
sion of thought.” As he compares his 
specimens he sees interesting grada- 
tions of resemblance, and becomes fas- 
cinated with the pleasure of tracing 
their relationships and the gradual evo- 
lution of higher forms from lower. 
Every lover of nature who haunts 
Carelies and honey, ah. the fields and woods acquires a rich 
tractive: fo: insects store of facts about plant life, and with- 
out, perhaps, recognising that he does 
so, distinguishes two great groups of plants—those which have 
attractive flowers, and those which have no flowers at all. His 
flowerless plants bear no seeds, but quan- 
tities of fine, dust-like particles which rise 
inthe air as he brushes his stick over their 
green leaves. As the powers of observa- 
tion develop, he distinguishes the ferns 
and Christmas greens among flowerless 
plants, and perhaps soon recognises that 
the soft green moss bank, too, is composed of small plants, 
and that the green mats, the liverworts, on stones and moist 
banks and logs, are plants also. His only reason, perhaps, for 
calling them plants is that they grow and are green. He may 
5 
Weed 
Ingenious stamens 
