XXXVI INTRODUCTION 



horsetails, and club mosses ; and the Phanerogamia, or Sperma- 

 tophyta, the flowering, seed-bearing plants. Of these only the 

 last comes within the scope of the present work. It is divided 

 into two divisions, very unequal in the number of species belong- 

 ing to them : the Angiosperms, or fruit-bearing plants, which have 

 their ovules enclosed in closed ovaries with a viscid stigma to 

 receive the pollen ; and the Gymnosperms, including the cone- 

 bearing trees, which have naked seeds and no stigmas, the pollen 

 falling directly upon the ovule. The Angiosperms, the larger 

 division, is subdivided into two classes, the Dicotyledons and the 

 Monocotyledons. The characters of these classes, and of the sub- 

 classes, series, and orders into which they are divided, are fully 

 given in the body of the work. 



PART III 



THE IDENTIFICATION OF PLANTS 



A few words may be of use here as to the way to employ the 

 body of the book when we wish to find out the name of any 

 flowering plant we may have met with in our walks. Suppose we 

 have found on some chalk-down a small wiry undershrub with 

 opposite entire leaves and conspicuous yellow flowers, in what 

 part of this work must we look for its name and description ? 

 Even if we cannot detect the netted veins in the leaves, the five 

 petals make us suspect the plant to be a Dicotyledon. There is 

 a calyx of three larger and two minute sepals below the petals, 

 and these last are not united ; so that it almost certainly belongs 

 to the sub-class Polypetalae, as we see by the Tabular View of the 

 Natural Orders on pp. xxxix — 1. Not only is the ovary distinctly 

 above both calyx and corolla, or " superior," but the numerous 

 stamens clearly spring from beneath it, and are, therefore, 

 " hypogynous." The plant belongs then to the series Thalamiflorae. 

 An examination and dissection of the ovary, or, more easily, of 

 the capsular fruit, shows a number of ovules or seeds springing in 

 three rows from the sides of a one-chambered ovary. It is, there- 

 fore, almost certainly " syncarpous," and for that reason does not 

 belong to Orders i or 2. The leaves at once tell us that it can 

 hardly belong to Orders 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 in the Tabular View ; but 

 all its characters agree with those of Order 8, the Cistinece, or 

 Rock-Rose Family, so we turn to the fuller description of this 

 group at p. 61, to which we are referred in the Tabular View, 

 before looking elsewhere. There we find that there is but one 

 British genus in the Order, viz. Helidnthzmum, and that, of the 



