PEEFACE. 



It is now nearly twenty years since an English dictionary 

 of botanical terms was published, and the development of 

 botany during that time has brought into use many new 

 terms and led to the abandonment of some of those which 

 were formerly employed. The present work, though larger 

 than any of its predecessors, is therefore wanting in certain 

 terms which are found in the earlier botanical dictionaries. 

 A few obsolete terms, however, which occur in standard 

 botanical literature are retained and marked as such. The 

 scope of this dictionary is nearly the same as that of its 

 predecessors, except that it is broader on the side of agri- 

 culture and horticulture, as it aims to include all technical 

 terms applied to plants both by botanists and others. Very 

 many of the newer terms are from the German botanists, to 

 whom we owe by far the greater part of modern structural 

 and physiological botany. These terms, particularly, in- 

 clude an unfortunately large number of synonyms, which 

 seem to be a necessary result of active research by inde- 

 pendent workers in the same fields. With few exceptions, 

 no definition is repeated, all approved synonyms being 

 brought together under one term. Where a choice existed 

 this has permitted the preferable term alone to be defined. 

 No obsolete or wholly undesirable synonyms, however, 

 accompany the definitions, and such of these as occur in 

 alphabetical order have usually been admitted only to refer 



