The student should always endeavour to determine the order to which any flower he finds belongs; and, if possible, the genus and the species. It is certainly a pleasure to be able to call flowers by their names, but at the same time it must be remembered that a vast deal of pleasure may be gained by the study of flowers--their peculiar structure, habits and habitats--even though their names are unknown; and the student who has learnt to recognise these characters, and to discover the relationships that exist between certain flowers of different species, is certainly much more fortunate than the one who knows abundance of names with only a meagre acquaintance with the flowers themselves. Our table of classification gives the most important distinguishing characters of the classes, sub-classes, and orders, of a very large proportion of our wild flowers, and will enable the reader to determine the natural order of almost every one he sees. In order to show how this table is to be used we will take an imaginary example. Let us suppose that we find a plant with a square stem; opposite, simple leaves with netted veins; flowers apparently in whorls, in the axils of the leaves; persistent calyx of five united sepals; a lipped corolla, of five united petals, two forming the lower, and three the upper lip; four stamens, attached to the corolla, two longer than the others; a superior, four-lobed ovary; and a fruit of four little nuts; then we proceed to determine the natural order to which it belongs as follows:-- The netted veins of the leaves, and the arrangement of the parts of the flower in whorls of four and five, show us at once that the plant is a _dicotyledon_. Then, the presence of both calyx and corolla enables us to decide that the plant belongs to Division I. of the dicotyledons--that it belongs to one of the orders 1 to 59. Noting, now, that the corolla is composed of united petals, we are enabled to fix its position in the subdivision I.B, among orders 37 to 59. Next, the superior ovary shows that it must be located in the group I.B 2--orders 44 to 59; and as the stamens are attached to the corolla, we see at once that it is not a member of order 44. Turning now to the Synopsis of the Natural Orders (p. 17), we find that the irregular flowers of this group of orders occur only in 51, 52, 53, 54, and 56. Finally, the square stem, opposite leaves, and character of the fruit, show us that the plant must belong to the order _Labiatæ_. The student should, as far as possible, deal with all flowers in this manner, assigning each one to its proper order; and, if he preserves his specimens for future observation, the names of the orders should always be attached, and the plants arranged accordingly.