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INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 229
Teller 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-Avater, 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 method,
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 diis name should be added the
place and time, where and when it was gathered, or fi'om
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 differences
observable in any particular set of organs chosen by
the author, as the phanerogamous plants are arranged by
Xjnnseus, according to the number, situation, and connexion
of their sexual organs, and the ci'yptogamous 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