INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
1. The term Borany is properly applicable to the whole of the 
science, which includes the study and investigation of the vegetable 
kingdom. Hence the examination of the internal structure of Plants, and 
of the various processes concerned in their growth and reproduction— 
_ the description of which strictly constitutes but a branch of the science 
of Botany, and may be designated structural and physiological Botany. 
But by those who have made the study of the vegetable kingdom a 
means of interesting recreation, rather than a professed object of pursuit, 
and even by some who have considered themselves scientific botanists, 
this branch has been entirely overlooked: and the whole attention has 
been devoted to the other department of the science, which concerns the 
arrangement or classification of the many thousand species of Plants 
existing on the surface of the globe, into groups or divisions; each of 
which includes a number of species, that have certain characters in com- 
mon, and that differ from those of other groups. The advantages of such 
a plan in the saving of time and laborare obvious. If all the peculiarities 
of every species of plant had to be studied and recollected by them- 
selves, it would require a long acquaintance and a retentive memory, 
to become master of the characters of the numerous species of flowering 
plants, which our own country produces; and when this number is 
multiplied by a hundred, which it probably must be to represent the 
amount of sfiecies existing on the entire globe, it is obvious that no single — 
mind could be capacious enough to grasp the vast amount of detail thug __ 
_ accumulated. . 
COLLECTION AND ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS. 
2. It is the business of the Botanist, therefore, in the first place, to — 
collect plants from all sources open to him; and he then arranges them 
according to their species. Thus, we will suppose that he has collected 
all the plants of the Northern United States, and that he has obtained a _ 
