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the size, shape, and color; the smoothness, thickness, and toughness of the rind; the firmness, taste, and color of the pulp; the size of the core; the size and shape of the seeds, etc. Only by proceeding in this regular way can you convey a good idea of the thing described. And besides that it will help you very much in finding material. It will lessen the chances of omission, thus insuring a more exhaustive treatment of the subject. And as you proceed, one thing will suggest another: the color and size of the apple, for instance, will suggest its marketing value, the firmness of the flesh will suggest its keeping qualities, the taste will suggest its uses. An enumeration of varieties will naturally follow the description of a single variety, for then differences can be more clearly indicated. Here, too, method can still be observed: apples fall naturally into summer, autumn, and winter varieties; and it may be well to limit yourself to kinds found in your immediate neighborhood.

Certain botanical terms will be useful here, such as pome, berry, pepo, nut, pod, akene, drupe, cone. Some of these are common enough but are occasionally misapplied through ignorance of their exact meaning. Learn to distinguish between true fruits, such as those mentioned above, and those which are popularly called fruits but are not such in the strict botanical sense, as the strawberry.

In the directions given above, why were size, shape, and color mentioned first? Because they are the most obvious and striking features. By them we recognize at once that an apple is an apple and not a plum or a pear or an orange. By them too we are enabled either

to determine its specific variety or to limit it to several closely allied varieties. The principle is simply this: Select the most salient characteristics first; follow in description that order which you are obliged to follow in observation.

The Violet.

Peach Blossoms.

The Wild Poppy.

EXERCISE XXIII.

FLOWERS.

Subjects:

The Flowers of Western New York.
My Favorite Flower.

Flowers as National Emblems.

Though in nature's order flowers come before fruits, they are placed second here as being more difficult to describe. The first four of the above subjects will serve for scientific description, the last two for more general, sympathetic, and imaginative treatment. For the first you can make good use again of botanical terms, calyx, sepal, corolla, petal, stamen, anther, pistil, etc. With a microscope and a specimen before you, you could get at the facts without these names, but in writing a description it will be of advantage to use the same names that others use. Even without any knowledge whatever of botany you will be no worse off than the first botanists who had to study the plants and flowers themselves instead of books. We of a later day cannot affect to despise books: they are time-savers, short cuts to knowledge; they enable us to begin where our ances

tors left off. But first-hand knowledge will always be most highly prized. The following is an example of a popular description of a flower, in which free use is none the less made of technical terminology:

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.

The trailing arbutus, known in botanies as Epigœa repens, is the earliest, sweetest, and most charming of our native flowers. It is an evergreen creeping plant, found mostly in mountainous regions, in ravines and on northern slopes. The leaves are deep green, from one to two inches long and about half as broad as long, borne on short petioles covered with brownish hairs. Each branch bears several of these leaves near its extremity, and then terminates in a crowded spike-like cluster of exquisite waxy flowers, varying in color from white to rich rose, and emitting a delicious, aromatic fragrance.

The flowers are tubular, the tube being half an inch in length and the expanded flower about half an inch across. They are enclosed in a membranous calyx of five pointed sepals, which are half as long as the tube, and these sepals are in turn embraced by three hairy, brownish bracts, somewhat broader and shorter than the sepals. The tube of the flower is wider at the base than above the sepals, and is densely set inside with long, silky, white hairs. It encloses entirely the pistil and ten stamens. The anthers are attached at one end, and borne upright; the seeds are small and numerous.

The buds are formed the previous season, and may be distinctly noticed in autumn. If the plants are lifted at that season and placed in a fernery kept in a cool room, as a partially heated bedroom, the buds will develop in February and yield their beauty and fragrance as freely as in their native haunts in spring. Left undisturbed where they grow, however, in the rich, sandy leafmould of a wooded northern slope, the buds are just ready to open on the approach of pleasant days, and may be found in perfection from the tenth of April till the first of May in the latitude of southern Pennsylvania. - Ladies' Home Companion.

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The term plants embraces the entire range of vegetable life from the gigantic forest tree to the moss that clings to its trunk and the toadstool that thrives beneath its shade. If the plant you select to write about bears flowers and fruit, some description of these will be necessary, though it will naturally not be so minute or exhaustive as if you were writing about them alone. Keep in mind your subject and observe throughout that symmetrical treatment which every subject demands. It would be manifestly absurd to devote half of an article on "The Chestnut" to a description of the leaves and half of it to a history of the tree, or one-fourth to general features and the remainder to the nut which the tree bears. Yet such absurdities are committed. A pupil has been known to write a six-page composition under the title of "The Maple," five pages of which were given up to an account of the manufacture of maple sugar. The composition was good enough in itself, but it needed. re-christening. There was a manifest incongruity between the subject and the subject-matter. Keep in

sight the subject always, and then give each feature of the object described only that prominence which its importance warrants.

It may be best to begin with a description of the general appearance of the plant. The reader will be better satisfied if he has at the outset some sort of outline picture of the whole. Then proceed to details. Take up in succession, so far as the plant in question possesses these organs, root, stem, branches, foliage, flowers, fruit. General considerations will follow — varieties, uses, associations. If you are describing the oak, note its symbolism as illustrated in the derivation of our word robust; note too its connection with Dodonæan and Druidic rites. In like manner the palm has a symbolism of its own and will call up more than one scriptural and classical allusion. There is a saying among the Arabs that "the palm tree has three hundred and sixty uses."

However, do not get the idea from what has been said that one particular order must always be followed. Such a practice would result in very mechanical, inflexible, monotonous composition. Many subjects will admit being treated in half a dozen orders, each of which has a defensible claim to the attribute of natural. Writers of genius may even depart from natural order altogether and still produce a happy effect. When you have thoroughly trained yourself in the systematic treatment of subjects so that the most intractable material will assume under your hands symmetry and just proportion, then you may more safely venture to strike out upon whatever lines your fancy suggests. Cultivated taste will have to be your guide.

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