AFTER giving courses of instruction in Botany to more 

 than one thousand pupils, and after having made various 

 attempts at simplifying the method of acquiring a knowl- 

 edge of this elegant arid useful science ; J perceive that 

 there still remains one very great obstacle to its progress. 

 Although the expencc of necessary hooks for pursuing 

 this study in the northern and middle states is reduced 

 to about three dollars ; yet our economical agricultural- 

 ists and mechanics are, and ought to be, unwilling to pay 

 for three or four sets of such books for the use of as many 

 children. 



With a view to obviate this difficulty, I suggested to 

 one of m\ students that, as we exercise our pupils with 

 but a small portion of the plants embraced in each class, 

 a very cheap book might be compiled from the Manual of 

 Botany and the Botanical Dictionary which should con- 

 tain descriptions of as many plants as we analyze in the 

 most extensive courses. He immediately set about the 

 work ; but soon discovered, that no subject relating to 

 Botany required so much experience as that of making a 



? roper selection of materials for the exercises of students, 

 have now gone through with the labor myself, and here 

 present you with the result. The teacher "will of course 

 have other books, and many of his pupils will also pro- 

 vide themselves with complete systems. But with this 

 book in the hands of each student, one set of iarger books 

 in a large family, or even five or six to a school of twenty 

 or thirty students, will enable teachers to give instruc- 

 tion to as good effect, as though each student possessed a 

 complete Botanical Library. 



About three fourths of plants collected by students must 

 be labelled tor the herbarium from the mere dictum of the 

 teacher. The remainder should be analyzed by the stu- 

 dents in the usual way at stated examinations. After a 

 student has made up an herbarium of a few hundred spe- 

 cies, and been well exercised in this abridged system, 

 no further instruction will ever be required. He will then 

 be able to analyze plants with the Manual or with any 

 ether system. 



M246597 



