PREFACE 



LIBRA k\ 

 '^EW YORK 

 BOTANrCAL 



This little book makes no attempt to condense a survey 

 of its science ; even within the fields through which it 

 passes it seeks only to be suggestive, not exhaustive ; its 

 chapters have actually grown out of the syllabus and 

 notes of University Extension Lectures, with their neces- 

 sary limitations. In matter and form its appeal is to the 

 general reader ; yet, in method and spirit, to the student 

 also, — in some measure even to the teacher. In botany, as 

 in other studies, educational methods alter with the times. 

 In the Linnean period the " best botanist was he who 

 knew the most plants," however little of each ; while a 

 later and still dominant school has founded upon Cuvier 

 a type-system which makes him know much, — but of 

 few. Hence the student has come no longer to load his 

 vasculum and memory in a single vacation, with all things 

 from the cedar to the hyssop ; but, seeing that cedar 

 and hyssop have been selected as types by the highest 

 authority, scrutinises these, and these only, for his term. 

 Analysis is great, and the anatomist is its prophet ; yet 

 such Elementary Biology is but Necrology, its so-called 

 ^ " life-histories " being but histories of form. 

 2^ It is the misfortune of biology that Darwin was not a 

 '^ teacher. It is no easy matter for us professors, trained 



CL 



