PREFACE. 



This volume takes the place of the author's Lessons in Botany 

 and Vegetable Physiology, published over a quarter of a cen- 

 tury ago. It is constructed on the same lines, and is a kind 

 of new and much revised edition of that successful work. While 

 in some respects more extended, it is also more concise and terse 

 than its predecessor. This should the better fit it for its purpose 

 now that competent teachers are common. They may in many cases 

 develop paragraphs into lectures, and fully illustrate points which 

 are barely, but it is hoped clearly, stated. Indeed, even for those 

 without a teacher, it may be that a condensed is better than a 

 diffuse exposition. 



The book is adapted to the higher schools, " How Plants Grow 

 and Behave " being the " Botany for Young People and Common 

 Schools." It is intended to ground beginners in Structural Botany 

 and the principles of vegetable life, mainly as concerns Flowering 

 or Phanerogamous plants, with which botanical instruction should 

 always begin ; also to be a companion and interpreter to the Man- 

 uals and Floras by which the student threads his flowery way to 

 a clear knowledge of the surrounding vegetable creation. Such a 

 book, like a grammar, must needs abound in technical words, 

 which thus arrayed may seem formidable ; nevertheless, if rightly 

 apprehended, this treatise should teach that the study of bot- 

 any is not the learning of names and terms, but the acquisition 

 of knowledge and ideas. No effort should be made to com- 

 mit technical terms to memory. Any term used in describing a 

 plant or explaining its structure can be looked up when it is 

 wanted, and that should suffice. On the other hand, plans of 



