Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/535

 Rh errors or misconceptions of others. A good practical botanist must be educated among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts, though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of the whole vegetable world, in a state of nature, could excell such a store of information.

Some persons recommend the preservation of specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most eligible for such as are very juicy. But it totally destroys their colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than the above-mentioned mode. It is besides incommodious for