178 THE PLANT WORLD 



A group of different species all of which showed general relation- 

 ships to one another might be called a genus (je'mts). The specific 

 name corresponds to the given name and the generic to the family 

 name, but the generic name is always placed first as my name is 

 printed, Hunter, George W., in the telephone book. 



But what is the use of all this, you ask. One very large division of 

 the study of biology, that of taxonomy or classification, depends upon 

 an understanding of the use of scientific terms used by Linnaeus and 

 his followers. We want to be able to place all plants and animals 

 in the places they belong in the tree of life. To the average boy 

 or girl, who enjoys field trips and who likes to collect specimens, a 

 superficial knowledge of the great groups of plant and animal life 

 is enough. But days and years of hard work may be necessary be- 

 fore the scientist masters enough knowledge to enable him to know 

 how to classify all living things correctly. Fortunately for the 

 layman, our museums, botanical gardens, and zoological parks have 

 specimens of various kinds, but in order to get much pleasure out 

 of such a visit he should be able to recognize at least the principal 

 plant and animal groups. The pages that follow are written be- 

 cause every citizen should have some knowledge along these lines. 



In addition to the pleasure of knowing the names of plants there 

 is satisfaction in learning something about their life histories, the 

 place they occupy in nature's scale of life, and best of all, we can 

 learn something about the good or harm some of these forms do to 

 mankind. 



Look at the enormous damage done to crops each year by 

 parasitic fungi such as molds, mildews, rusts, and other plant 

 diseases. Black stem rust alone costs some of the wheat- 

 raising states in a single year almost as much as they put into 

 their state system of public instruction for that year. And yet, 

 paradoxical as it seems to say it, some of these plants add much 

 to man's comfort and control the future of man's expansion on the 

 earth. What would we do without yeast to make our bread rise 

 or give us commercial alcohol? And how much we enjoy the 

 flavor imparted to certain foods by molds. 



Man is dependent primarily on the world's crops and the world's \ 

 crops are dependent upon the amount of raw materials m the i 



