INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 
229 
seller at most inns, the plant being covered with paper to 
protect it from the iron. 
Some plants are so vivacious that they continue to grow, 
even when dried and placed upon paper ; and others are 
apt to lose their leaves ; the remedy for both these defects is 
to dip them for a few minutes in boiling water. 
When the plants are dried, they should be placed upon 
leaves of paper of a proper size, either foolscap folio, or 
demy quarto; which last size is in general sufficient, and 
should a long grass occasionally require more room it may 
be laid down on a double leaf, and then folded. The 
mosses, being almost universally minute plants, require only 
an octavo or even duodecimo leaf. The plants are gene- 
rally fastened down with paste, gum-water, isinglass-jelly, 
or, still better, a mixture of the two latter : other botanists 
sew them down, or fasten them by narrow slips of paper 
passed through slits made in the leaf. In the first me- 
thod, it is difficult to take the plants off for re-examination 
and comparison, and paste is apt to attract insects ; while, 
in the second method, the threads and ends of the slips 
catch hold of the plants placed on the sheet below them, 
and derange, if not in some measure destroy, these plants : 
upon the whole, the fastening of the specimens by slips of 
paper glued down at each end seems preferable to any 
other mode, and attended with the fewest inconveniences. 
No more than one species of plants should be fastened 
upon the same leaf, and the leaf should be subscribed with 
its different names, or at least with that of the botanical 
author in most repute; to this name should be added the 
place and time, where and when it was gathered, or from 
whom procured. 
Botanical writings being usually arranged either in the 
alphabetical order of the names as in dictionaries, or in 
what are called artificial systems, according to the differ- 
ences observable in any particular set of organs chosen by 
the author, as the phanerogamous plants are arranged by 
Linnaeus, according to the number, situation, and con- 
nexion of their sexual organs, and the cryptogamous plants 
by their general appearance; or, lastly, in the natural 
method, founded upon the analogy and relation subsisting 
between plants, so far as they have been discovered : so the 
specimens thus collected may be arranged in either. While 
the collection is yet in its infancy, the alphabetical order is 
not improper ; as the student advances in the science, the 
artificial system adopted as a guide will be found more 
