FLORA INDICA. 



tiny of a few of the points under a microscope, he has made 

 real progress as an observer. This, we maintain, is no more 

 botany, than performing chemical experiments is chemistry, or 

 star-gazing, astronomy. A sound elementary knowledge of 

 vegetable physiology is essential to the naturalist, 

 indeed be a branch of ffeneral ftdnratinn. s»«*it. rnin 



and 



P general education, as it requires nothing 

 but fair powers of observation and an ordinary memory to ac- 

 quire it. For the student to confine his attention to this 

 knowledge of the vegetable world, and to try and improve 

 upon it by crude experiments of his own, undertaken in igno- 

 rance of the branches of pure botany we have enumerated, is a 

 very rational amusement, but nothing more. 



A review of the progress of the science in E] 

 the last fifty years, proves indisputably, that more botanists 

 were made by the thorough grounding in classification to 

 which all students were formerly subjected, than by the pre- 

 sent method of commencing instruction with anatomy and 

 physiology, organic chemistry, the use of compound micro- 

 scopes, and similar abstruse subjects, which are mysteries to 

 the majority of students. The latter are indeed, in too many 



gland during 



elements 



some 



--■a ~ jt>* «~ m^oj. «^4uo.mutuce wun piaius auu. mi,"- 



organs, before they can appreciate the relations of the different 

 branches of botany to one another, or discriminate between 



anderstand first, and what is better 



acquired afterwards. Were the elei_„ w ^^ _ & _ - 

 schools, this would not be so : we should then have the stu- 

 dent presenting himself at the botanical lectures fully prepared 

 for the more difficult branches of the science, and for making 

 that progress in them for which the professor's aid is indis- 

 pensable. A sound practical knowledge of system we hold to 

 be an essential preliminary to the study of the physiology of 



plication of the Natural Sy*. M .nitrated by mecUcinal plants and their 

 property lhe botanical claw would not (hen be womUmSi a, it now uni- 

 v«jB, ^ « tan. thrown away, an,, an interfere with the legitimate studies 

 of tho me<l,eal student,-*, apmm also shared by many of tlu t>rof*«o™. 



