Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/205

 Rh despite of incidental errors. Perhaps no mind, though ever so intent on the subject, can retain all the possible terms of description and their various combinations, for ready use at any given moment. There are few natural objects to which a variety of terms are not equally applicable in description, so that no two writers would exactly agree in their use. Neither is Nature herself so constant as not perpetually to elude our most accurate research. Happy is that naturalist who can seize at a glance what is most characteristic and permanent, and define all that is essential, without trusting to fallacious, though ever so specious, distinctions!

9. Folia composita, compound leaves, consist of two or any greater number of foliola, leaflets, connected by a common footstalk.

Folium articiilatum, a jointed leaf, is when one leaflet, or pair of leaflets, grows out of the summit of another, with a sort of joint, as in Fagara tragodes, ''Jacq. Amer., t.'' 14.