First get to know the part you are to work on later in a general way, noting the chief plants and in what way they are associated. Be careful in working to keep your sheets in regular order, and begin with the one at the bottom left-hand corner of the whole map. Find the exact spot on the ground which is represented by the point of the bottom left-hand corner of your first sheet, and put a white stake into it at least two feet high; it is better if you add a little red and white flag, so that you can see it from a distance. Then find each of the other four corners of your small sheet, measuring the distance from a wall or tree if need be, and put in each a white stake similar to that marking the first corner. If your map is on the 25-inch scale, and you have cut it into sixteen equal pieces, you will find that the area staked out on the ground represented in one piece is not so large but that you can see over it, and by walking about within it, get all the features of the plants growing there mapped out on to your sheet. In studying the different patches of plants, you will find that, as a rule, in each there is one important plant which grows in great numbers, while there are many more scattered and less important species growing with it. Such patches of plants growing together may be called ~Associations~, and in mapping we only pay attention to the chief of these. In a patch where cotton-grass is the most conspicuous thing, there may be also half a dozen small grasses and plants growing with it, in which case everything but the cotton grass would be ignored in the mapping, and the association called the “cotton grass” association. Similarly, a patch where heather is the most important plant would be called the heather association. Sometimes you may find two or more plants growing together which seem to share the area between them, so that it is impossible to tell which is the chief one; in such a case where, for example, heather and bilberry are apparently equally important, the association would be described as “heather-bilberry.” For the sake of reference, lists should be kept of all the plants of less importance growing in the associations, though they are ignored in the mapping. At the beginning it is wise to go over the area and find out roughly how many chief associations there are in it, and to make out a list of them. Then choose either a colour or a sign to represent each of them in the mapping,--a colour will generally be found to be clearer and more effective in the finished map, though a sign is very useful for the field-work.