PREFACE. 



The want of some English work on Botany, at once of a mere ele- 

 mentary character and comprehending all the more important points of 

 the science, has given rise to the publication of the following pages. The 

 propositions which they contain are such as it is of the most indispensa 

 ble importance for a student to understand ; and they all appear to be 

 strictly deducible either from the facts recorded by observers worthy of 

 confidence, or from the experience of the author. They form the Ixisis of 

 the Lectures delivered by him in the University of London, and are pur- 

 posely divested of illustrative or explanatory matter; his only object 

 having been to reduce the first principles of Botany to their simplest form. 



No person can be considered a Botanist who is unacquainted with the 

 nature of the evidence upon which such of these propositions as are indis- 

 putable, are founded ; or by which it is supposed that others, which are less 

 certain, can be disproved. Acquiring this kind of knowledge constitutes 

 the study of Vegetable Comparative Anatomy, or Organography ; a cu- 

 rious and interesting subject, upon which Systematic Botany entirely 

 depends. 



Whatever value may attach to this little work would have been essen- 

 tially diminished by the introduction of theories unsupported by what may 

 be reasonably considered satisfactory evidence. They have, therefore, been 

 avoided as far as the nature of the subject, in which much is incapable of 

 direct demonstration, would permit. 



The wish of the author has been to sketch a slight but accurate outline, 

 the details of which are to be filled up by the reader himself, who for this 

 purpose cannot do better than consult the " Organographie Vegetale" of 

 Decandolle, or the " Elementa Philosophise Bolanicae" of Link ; two 

 works of the highest reputation, in the general accuracy of which the stu- 

 dent may place confidence. He will easily see what parts of either are 

 merely hypothetical, and what are founded upon direct observation ; and 

 he will find that it is chiefly the latter class which applies to the proposi- 

 tions introduced into this book. 



Each paragraph has a separate number ; and in all cases in which 

 allusion is made in one paragraph to a subject of importance incidentally 



