140 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



difficulties altogether imaginary; for invested with numerous techni- 

 calities, divided into several classes, subdivided into genera, and inter- 

 spersed with exceptions and variations from every established rule, 

 many an inquiring mind has been turned aside in disgust from this most 

 laudable and fascinating pursuit. 



In the Linnaean system, the simplicity of the classification in its 

 leading characters, will be readily admitted, but when the student has 

 mastered this in its general features, and after he has perhaps collected 

 a considerable variety of specimens, he will find to his mortification that 

 his mind has made little or no progress in the science ; that, in short, he 

 has merely loaded his memory with a number of technicalities and names, 

 without having entered, in any degree, into the physiology of the 

 vegetable kingdom. Stripped, however, of its external disguise, few 

 things are better calculated to invite the nearer approach of the student, 

 and none to afford, independent of its acknowledged importance, a 

 higher intellectual enjoyment — to elevate and refine the taste, and, as a 

 main object, to magnify the wonders of Him who has surrounded his 

 intelligent creatures with innumerable instances of his power, his wisdom, 

 and his beneficence. It may be said that every advance in the natural 

 sciences is a step that surrounds the throne of Him whose light is 

 inaccessible but through the medium of his works. 



The design of the "Ladies' Botany" is to spread before us, in its 

 broader features, the whole vegetable world. This the author has done 

 by classing it according to the natural system, into three distinct 

 families : two of these comprise the whole flowering creation ; the third, 

 or Cryptogamic family, descends to the very verge which divides the 

 vegetable and animal kingdoms. The two first of these classes he dis- 

 tinguishes as Dicotyledenous, or Exogenous, and Monocotyledenous, or 

 Endogenous plants. 



The first of these derives its technical distinction from the embryo 

 containing two cotyledons or seed-lobes ; and from the outer part of the 

 stem, or sapwood, being the youngest, or last of growth. It is likewise 

 generally distinguished by its throwing out branches — by the concentric 

 circles of its wood — by medullary rays proceeding from the bark to the 

 central pith, and by the veins of the leaves bearing the appearance of 

 network. The second, or Monocotyledon class, is constituted of plants, 

 of which the embryo contains but one cotyledon, which grow by 

 the centre of the stem, throw out no branches, and whose leaves are not 

 netted. 



Thus the peculiar characteristics of these families lie equally in the 

 corolla, the leaves, the stem, and in the carpels or seed-vessels ; which 

 enables the student, at every stage of vegetation, at once to decide as to 

 which of the leading classes his specimen belongs. 



The third of these families is the Crytogamic, which contains ferns, 

 mosses, the junger mannia, lichen, mushroom, and sea-weed tribes. 



The great and leading features of the vegetable kingdom as thus ex- 

 plained by the ** Natural System of Botany" being clearly understood, 

 the student has advanced one important step, and feels his foot firmly 

 planted within its dominions. If he determine to advance further in 

 this delightful province of natural science, he will discover that a film 

 has been removed from his eyes, and that the way is clear before him to 

 proceed as may suit his pleasure. And if his object have been merely 

 to obtain a general view of the world of flowers, he will have done so in 

 a manner materially to enlarge his conception of the wonders and graces 

 of the vegetable creation, which from henceforth will no longer meet 

 him in the character of obscure hieroglyphics, but will speak to him in a 



