“To learn how to observe and how to distinguish things correctly, is the greater part of education, and is that in which people otherwise well educated are apt to be surprisingly deficient. Natural objects, everywhere present and endless in variety, afford the best field for practice; and the study when young, first of Botany, and afterwards of other Natural Sciences, as they are called, is the best training that can be in these respects. This study ought to begin even before the study of language. For to distinguish things scientifically (that is, carefully and accurately) is simpler than to distinguish ideas. And in Natural History the learner is gradually led from the observation of things, up to the study of ideas or the relations of things.” — Asa Gray, in How Plants Grow: A Simple Introduction to Structural Botany