PREFACE. XXV 



rate determination of our species of native plants, 

 but also to inculcate and exemplify principles ca- 

 pable of more extensive application. I wish to lead 

 young botanists to the study of genera and species, 

 with their true grounds of distinction and definition. 

 Those who may take the trouble accurately to follow 

 me, will find I have given my whole attention to 

 these objects. I have also, for the first time in a 

 general British Flora, introduced the Natural Orders 

 of our plants, and have under each genus subjoined 

 a compendious view of its natural habit, characters 

 and qualities, after the manner first attempted by 

 Gouan, and carried to perfection in the Sy sterna of 

 DeCandolle, a prodigy of knowledge and labour, 

 and the greatest work of practical Botany that this 

 age, or perhaps any other, has produced. But I 

 have offered no natural arrangement of the British 

 plants. A Flora can afford but a broken and partial 

 view of a Natural System, nor can such a system 

 answer the first purpose of a Flora, which is to en- 

 able unpractised students to investigate and deter- 

 mine unknown plants. Those English botanists 

 who wish to become acquainted with the dependence 

 of the natural orders on each other, as exemplified 

 in the system of Jussieu, will find all they can de- 

 sire in my Grammar of Botany, chiefly designed 

 for that purpose. The Artificial System of Linnaeus, 

 equally applicable to any Flora or catalogue of 

 plants, is used in the present work ; that any bo- 

 tanist, by reducing a plant to its class and order, 

 according to the perspicuous and easy rules of that 

 system, may next compare it with the short essential 

 characters of the genera, at the head of each class, 



