Poe MENTS OF BOTAN Y. 
“INTRODUCTORY. 
‘‘ Botany is the science which endeavors to answer every reasonable 
question about plants.” } 
- Tue plant is a living being, provided generally with many 
parts, called organs, which it uses for taking in nourishment, 
for breathing, for protection against its enemies, and for 
reproducing itself and so keeping up the numbers of its own 
kind. The study of the individual plant therefore embraces 
a variety of topics, and the examination of its relation to 
others introduces many more subjects. 
' Morphology, or the science of form, structure, and so on, 
deals with the plant without much regard to its character as 
a living thing. Under this head are studied the forms of 
plants and the various shapes or disguises which the same 
sort of organ may take in different kinds of plants, their 
gross structure, their microscopical structure, their classifiea- 
tion, and the successive stages in the history of the germs 
from which all but a few of the very simplest plants are 
formed. 
* Geographical Distribution, or botanical geography, discusses 
the range of the various kinds of plants over the earth’s sur- 
face. Another subdivision of botany, usually studied along 
with geology, describes the history of plant life on the earth 
from the appearance of the first plants until the present time. 
» 1 Professor George L. Goodale. 
