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22 divisions (Classes, Orders, etc.), according to their characteristics, which are largely taken from the structure of the flowers. The general explanations are given in the Introduction, and we will now proceed to notice the various Orders, etc., which include British plants, with special reference to those figured. It will be good practice for the beginner to compare the plants themselves with our figures and descriptions, and verify the characters which we have given. All botanists do not follow the same arrangement in classifying the Orders of plants. That followed here will be found to correspond nearly with that employed in the latest English scientific compendium: Babington's "Manual of British Botany," edition 9 (1904).

Plants with flowers in which distinct stamens and pistils are visible are called Phanerogamia, or Flowering Plants, and these alone are discussed in the present work.

Plants without real flowers, and multiplying by spores, are called Cryptogamia. These are Ferns, Mosses, Seaweeds, Lichens, Fungi, Diatoms, Bacteria, etc.; and the lowest organisms merge into the Protozoa—extremely rudimentary forms, which cannot be satisfactorily regarded as either animals or vegetables, but are not yet differentiated into either one or the other.