SYSTEMATIC BOTANY 



By Chari.e;s W. Bowi^es. 



WHEN attempting to study any complex subject like 

 botany, it is of great assistance to many people to first 

 learn a brief and easily understood ''thread" that runs through 

 the whole subject, serving as a basis to which all future data 

 can be attached. Without such a clear, definite basis, or 

 skeleton, the facts learned sooner or later becomes hopelessly 

 confused. The usual text-books on any subject are like hun- 

 dreds of labyrinths, every word may be the one and the only 

 one that will lead us to a comprehensive understanding of 

 what we are trying to learn, but hope often dies within us 

 long before we come to the end of exploring the interminable 

 number of "blind passages." If any plant is looked up in an 

 encyclopaedia, the statement is usually made that "It belongs 



to the natural order of ". The accompanying "Outline 



of the Vegetable Kingdom" is an attempt to list all of these 

 natural orders in a comprehensive way that will be brief 

 enough for the average mind to grasp. After studying bot- 

 any for thirty-five years, the confusion caused by the almost 

 innumerable text-books on the subject, makes this "thread" 

 seem like a small but safe raft or boat in the midst of the 

 ocean of botanical literature that stretches away out of sight 

 in all directions. 



Prof. VViUis Linn Jepson, of the University of California, 

 at Berkeley, Calif., (to whom I am greatly indebted for cor- 

 rections and suggestions) says of this: "The Outline of the 

 Vegetable Kingdom which you have constructed, seems to me 

 wonderfully compact, clear, and easy to follow. . . .The orders 



