INTRODUCTION. 
being; but amidst the multiplicity of objects, and from the brief period allowed for inspection, the impression made 
upon the mind is soon enfeebled, and in most cases altogether fades, if close mien more protracted observation be not 
afforded. It is then desirable to possess the means of reviving impressions received, of studying the subject at leisure, 
id ing the plants familiar. | 
nly to students will the publication be serviceable ; it will materially aid numerous teachers, whose facili- 
ties of the works from which the necessary materials-for illustration can be derived, are few and imperfect, 
and in this respect a double end will be accomplished. 
In the execution of the work a variety of materials has been employed. The design has been to furnish the most 
faithful sketches. ‘This has been done by presenting such as are of known authority, derived from different illustrative 
works. Where such have been used, no one has been exclusively followed, but the best figures selected. The author 
is thus indebted for many of his drawings to the continuation of the Botanical Magazine, by Hooker, the Flore Medi- 
eale, the Plantes Grasses of De Candolle, the work of Nees von Esenbeck, that of Nectoux, the Plantes Equinoctiales 
of Humboldt and Bonpland, the Hortus Medicus of Graves and Morries, and Hayne’s Medical Botany. Yet the labour | 
which has devolved upon him has not. been entirely that of compilation ; in some respects a claim to originality may 
be set up. From the collection of specimens which during the last ten years, he has been enabled to make, and which 
have been employed by him in the Courses at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, many of the representations are 
. entirely new, and where they are not strictly so, corrections have been made from this source, which render them 
more valuable than those which have been used as copy. : 
! The accompanying text contains a succinct account of each plant, comprehending all the details necessary to under- 
stand its character and relations, in a scientific and medicinal point of view. The arrangement or classification is that 
of Jussieu as modified by De Candolle, for an exposition of which reference may be made to Pereira’s Materia Medica, — 
or the recent Manual of Dr. Royle. Those readers who are desirous of seeing the full extent of its application, may 
be further satisfied by the perusal of Richard’s Histoire Naturelle Medicale, and Fee’s Cours d’Histoire N aturelle 
ique. The Medical Botany of Dr. Lindley, and that of Dr. R. E. Griffith may also be consulted. This 
resting. Affinities of the kind were suspected by the older botanists, and sketched by Linneus. From this origi- 
nated, no doubt, the plan pursued by Murray in his Apparatus Medicaminum, and of Woodville in his Medical 
ining to it have been omitted. The works ially written with the vj 2 of ij 
them are full, and of easy access, | ak ies n wi = unfolding 
