THE ELEMENTS 



OF 



STRUCTURAL BOTANY. 



1. The study of Botany is commonly rendered unat- 

 tractive to the beginner by the order in which the parts 

 of the subject are presented to him. His patience be- 

 comes exhausted by the long interval which must neces- 

 sarily elapse before he is in a position to do any practical 

 work for himself. In accordance with the usual plan, 

 some months are spent in committing to memory a mass 

 of terms descriptive of the various modifications which 

 the organs of plants undergo ; and not until the student 

 has mastered these, and perhaps been initiated into the 

 mysteries of the fibro- vascular system, is he permitted to 

 examine a plant as a whole. In this little work, we 

 purpose, following the example of some recent writers, 

 to reverse this order of things, and at the outset to put 

 into the learner's hands some common plants, and to 

 lead him, by his own examination of these, to a know- 

 ledge of their various organs to cultivate, in short, not 

 merely his memory, but also, and chiefly, his powers of 

 observation. 



