3G 
STUDY OF BOTANY. 
The course begins in the autumn and finishes in the 
spring, and the student who goes through it conscientiously 
will gain a fair knowledge of the principles of Elementary 
Botany. 
If no such course is available, there are plenty of good 
books from which he may get similar information, but it is 
rather drier and harder work to read for yourself than to 
follow a teacher. Among the many books on Elementary 
Botany, of which I have no less than sixteen in my own 
library, the following three may be particularly recom¬ 
mended, viz.: — 
Dr. Hooker’s “Primer of Botany,” price Is. 
Prof. Oliver’s “ Lessons in Elementary Botany,” 
price 4s. Gd. 
Mrs. Kitchener’s “ A Year’s Botany,” price about 6s. 
If the student happens to possess any ,other recent work 
of the kind it will do nearly as well. If not, let him buy one 
or all of these and read them through, carefully following their 
instructions. Nearly every book will contain something not 
found in the others. 
The next step will be to get a personal acquaintance with 
the wild plants, to learn to know them by sight and by name, 
to be able to classify them, and to ascertain their uses. 
Something of all this will have been gathered in going 
through the books already mentioned, but a good deal more 
is required. In order to impress upon the memory the 
appearance and the names of plants they require to be 
brought frequently under notice—once or twice is not 
sufficient. 
For this purpose there is no better method than the 
forming of an Herbarium or a Botanical Garden, or both. 
The plants must be collected, the names and classification 
worked out from books, the specimens frequently handled, and 
then preserved either dried in an Herbarium or living in a 
classified garden—the latter is the less common but perhaps 
the more interesting method; but it is also much more 
difficult, because some plants are too large and others too 
small to be easily manageable, while some want water, others 
rock, or peat, or sea sand, and will not flourish in common 
garden soil. The dried garden, hortus siccus, or Herbarium, is 
therefore the usual method of preserving the specimens, and 
it is easy, cheap, and fairly satisfactory. Many of the books 
give full instructions for drying and mounting the plants, but 
I may say here that perhaps the best paper for drying is that 
supplied by West, Newman, and Co., 54, Hatton Garden, 
London ; that a beginner should have at least three quires 
