1035. Begin by acquiring the names of a great number of individuals, Supposing the plants growing in a named collection, or that you have any person to tell you their names: then take any old book, and begin at any point (in preference the beginning) of the collection, border, or field, and taking a leaf from the plant whose name you wish to know, put it between the two first leaves of the book, writing the name with a pencil, if you are gathering from a named collection, or if not, merely write a number, and get the name inserted by your instructor afterwards. Gather, say a dozen the first day; carry the book in your pocket, and fix these names in your memory, associated with the form and colour of the leaves, by repeatedly turning to them during the moments of leisure of one day. Then, the second day, proceed to the plants, and endeavour to apply the names to the entire plant. To assist you, take them in the order in which you gathered them, and refer to the book when your memory fails. To aid in recollecting the botanic names, endeavour, after you have gathered the leaves, either by books or your instructor, to learn the etymology of the name, and something of the history of the plant, &c. Attach the leaves by two transverse cuts in the paper, or by any simple process, so as the first set may not fall out when you are collecting a second. Having fixed the first fasciculus in your memory, form a second, which you may increase according to your capacity of remembering. Proceed as before during the second day; and the beginning of the third day, begin at your first station, and recall to memory the names acquired during both the first and second day. In this way go on till you have acquired the names of the great majority of the plants in the garden or neighbourhood where you are situated. Nothing is more easily remembered than a word when it is associated with some visible object, such as a leaf or a plant; and the more names of plants we know, the more easy does it become to add to our stock of them. A person who knows only ten plants will require a greater effort of memory to recollect two more, than one who knows a thousand will to remember an additional two hundred. That gardener must have little desire to learn who cannot, in two or three weeks, acquire the names of a thousand plants, if already arranged. If to be collected in the fields, it is not easy getting a thousand leaves or specimens together; but, in general, every gardener requires to charge his memory with the names, and ideas or images, of between five hundred and one thousand plants; as being those in general cultivation as agricultural plants, forest-trees, and field-shrubs, horticultural plants, plants of ornament, and those requiring eradication as weeds.
