VI PREFACE. 



after the manner of Rousseau's delightful Letters on 

 Botany, is the object of the present volume. The 

 arrangement of this author, and that of his well known 

 editor, Professor Martyn of Oxford, has been the 

 model on which the author proceeded in the first part 

 of this treatise. The technical history of the herba- 

 ceous part of the plant, and the terminalogy as a 

 separate treatise, have appeared to him as scarcely 

 forming any necessary part of a direct introduction to 

 systematic botany, and all its purposes are probably 

 answered by the glossary of terms given at the end of 

 the volume, with the familiar explanations interspers- 

 ed through some of the first chapters of the work ; 

 these, with the aid of the plates and the explanations 

 attached to them, it is to be hoped, will not leave much 

 to acquire of the technical part of the science. To 

 be able at an early period of the study to commence 

 the arrangement of plants by their flowers, and to dis- 

 tinguish them from each other, as well as to contem- 

 plate their structure and observe their mutual relations, 

 is a study certainly far more amusing and useful, than 

 a mere attention to the names and characters of the 

 unimportant and unattractive parts of the vegetable. 



I must also acknowledge, that, however attractive 

 the natural method of arranging plants may be to my- 

 self, I do not yet, for the beginner, know of any sub- 



