1039. Study the descriptions of plants with the plants before you. For this purpose, procure any good Species Plantarum or Flora, in Latin, if you know a little of that language, as the Hortus Kewensis, or Smith's Flora Britannica; or in English, as Hooker's British Flora, or Mackay's Flora Hibernica, for the Linnï¾µan system; but if you wish to study the natural system, get Lindley's School Botany, and carefully read over the descriptions and compare them with the plants before you. For more advanced students the Elements of Botany will be very useful; but for young beginners School Botany is by far the best. Persevere in comparing all the plants you find with their botanical description, collecting an herbarium, and writing the complete description of each specimen under it, till all the parts of plants are familiar to you. When that is the case, you will be able, on a plant's being presented to you which you never saw before, to discover (by the Linnï¾µan method, if it be in flower), first, its class and order, and next, by the aid of proper books, its generic and specific name; and this, as far as respects the names of plants, is to attain the object in view. By the natural system, the same end may be still more easily attained; and in many cases, even a leaf will be sufficient to decide the generic name, and the principal properties of the plant; as, for example, whether it be poisonous or fit for human food.
