What to us is the dry knowledge of scientific classifications?
For my part, I believe that the authors of them have obscured rather than simplified the knowledge of natural history.

Take an example.
There is one before our eyes.

You see those long streamers hanging down from the live oaks ?" "Yes, yes," replied Francois; "the Spanish moss." "Yes, Spanish moss, as we call it here, or _old-man's-beard_ moss, as they name it in other parts.

It is no moss, however, but a regular flowering plant, although a strange one.

Now, according to these philosophic naturalists, that long, stringy, silvery creeper, that looks very like an old man's beard, is of the same family of plants as the pineapple!" "Ha! ha! ha!" roared Francois; "Spanish moss the same as a pineapple plant! Why, they are no more like than my hat is to the steeple of a church." "They are unlike," continued Lucien, "in every respect--in appearance, in properties, and uses; and yet, were you to consult the dry books of the closet-naturalists, you would learn that this Spanish moss (_Tillandsia_) was of a certain family of plants, and a few particulars of that sort, and that is all you would learn about it.