Osmunda, Onoclea, Lycopodium, Polytrichum, Bryum, Marchantia,
Usnea, Parmelia, Cladonia, Agaricus, Chondrus, and perhaps a few other
genera, furnish plants so familiar and so striking that a child will
be sure to inquire concerning them, and a general description could
easily be framed in a few words which could not mislead him concerning
them.

In writing for children, Dr. Gray seems to have put on a new nature,
in which we have a much fuller sympathy with him than we have ever had
in reading his larger books. We do not like that cold English common
sense which seems reluctant to admit any truth in the higher regions
of thought; and we confess, that, until we had read this little
child's book, "How Plants Grow," we had always suspected Dr. Gray of
leaning towards that old error, so finely exposed by Agassiz in
zooelogy, of considering genera, families, etc., as divisions made by
human skill, for human convenience,--instead of as divisions belonging
to the Creator's plan, as yet but partially understood by human
students.

We hope that the appearance of this masterly little book, so finely
adapted to the child's understanding, may have the effect of
introducing botany into the common schools. The natural taste of
children for flowers indicates clearly the propriety and utility of
giving them lessons upon botany in their earliest years. Go into any
of our New England country-schools at this season of the year, and you
will find a bouquet of wild flowers on the teacher's desk. Take it up
and separate it,--show each flower to the school, tell its name, and
its relationship to other and more familiar cultivated flowers, the
characteristic sensible properties of its family, etc.,--and you will
find the younger scholars your most attentive listeners. And if any
practical man ask, What is the use of the younger scholars learning
anything about wild flowers, which the cultivation of the country may
soon render extinct, and which are but weeds at best?--there are two
sufficient answers ready: first, that all truth is divine, and that
the workmanship of infinite skill is beautiful and worthy of the eyes
which may behold it; secondly, that no mental discipline is better
adapted for the young mind than this learning how to distinguish
plants. No more striking deficiency is observable, in most men, than
the lack of a power to observe closely and with accuracy. The general
inaccuracy of testimony, usually ascribed to inaccuracy of