PREFACE. 



IN preparing the present work, it was our purpose to furnish the student 

 in Botany with a complete manual within the compass of an ordinary duo- 

 decimo volume. To this end, we have revised the introductory treatise 

 and recorded the principles of the Science in fewer words, occupying but 

 two-thirds the space so used in the Class-Book. We have thus made room 

 for the introduction of a series of Synoptical Tables a feature entirely new 

 exhibiting the principles contained in the several chapters at a single 

 glance, and in their combined relations. In the preparation of these tables 

 we have received important aid from Prof. S. A. NORTON, of Mount Au- 

 burn Seminary, Cincinnati. They are intended for the blackboard, and 

 we are confident that both teacher and pupil will find them an essential 

 aid both to the understanding and memoiy. 



Our new Flora will be found a phenomenon in brevity. Within the 

 space of 426 duodecimo pages, in fair leaded type, we have recorded and 

 defined nearly 4,500 species all the known Flowering and Fern-like plants, 

 both native and cultivated (not excepting the Sedges and Grasses), grow- 

 ing in the Atlantic half of the country. This conciseness has been attained, 

 not by the omission of anything necessaiy to the complete definition and 

 prompt recognition of every species, but simply by avoiding repetitions. In 

 the final definition of the species (see, for example, R. bulbosus, the Bulbous 

 Buttercup, p. 20) we give but one, two, three, rarely 4 lines. This cannot, 

 of course, include its full portraiture. It includes only those few features 

 which have not already been given elsewhere, and which Tiere serve to 

 distinguish the R. bulbows from the two preceding species with which it 

 stands grouped in the table. But the full portraiture of R. bulbosus (and 

 of every species) w_a nevertheless be found in the Flora. Some of its fea- 

 tures are given under its genus, Ranunculus ; some under its Order ; some 

 under its Cohort ; others under its Class, its Province, and its Sub-kingdom. 



