PREFACE 



IN preparing the present volume, the aim of the writer has 

 been to meet all the college entrance requirements and at the 

 same time to bring the study of botany into closer touch with 

 the practical business of life by stressing its relations with 

 agriculture, economics, and, in certain of its aspects, with sani- 

 tation. While technical language has been avoided so far 

 as the requirements of scientific accuracy will permit, the 

 student is not encouraged to shirk the use of necessary botani- 

 cal terms, out of a mere superstitious fear of words because 

 they happen to be a little new or unfamiliar. Such a practice 

 not only leads to careless and inaccurate modes of expression, 

 but tends to foster a slovenly habit of mind, and in the long run 

 causes the waste of more time and labor in the search after 

 roundabout, and often misleading, substitutes, than it would 

 require to master the proper use of a few new words and 

 phrases. 



In the choice of materials for experiment and illustration, 

 the endeavor has been to call for such only as are familiar and 

 easily obtained. The specimens for flower dissection have been 

 selected mainly from common cultivated kinds, because their 

 wide distribution makes them easy to obtain everywhere, while 

 in cities and large towns they are practically the only specimens 

 available. Another important consideration has been the desire 

 to spare our native wild flowers, or at least not to hasten the 

 extinction with which they are threatened by the ravages of Sun- 

 day excursionists and summer tourists, to whose unthinking, 

 but none the less destructive, incursions, the automobile has laid 

 open the most secret haunts of nature. The influence of the 

 public school teacher, and more especially the teacher of botany, 

 is the most potent factor from which we can hope for aid in 

 putting a stop to the relentless persecution that has practically 

 exterminated many of our choicest wild plants and is fast 



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