PREFACE. 



THERE are probably few persons engaged in teaching 

 Botany to medical students in this country, who have 

 not experienced great inconvenience from the want of 

 some work in which correct systematical descriptions of 

 medicinal plants are to be found, and which is cheap 

 enough to be used as a class book. By the author, at 

 least, this has been so strongly felt, that he would long 

 since have made the present attempt at supplying the 

 deficiency had he been a medical man, or had he not 

 hoped in each succeeding year that such a work would 

 have appeared from the pen of some writer of reputation, 

 both as a botanist and pharmacologist. This expectation 

 has not been realised ; the necessity that students should 

 have access to a botanical account of the plants which 

 furnish the substances used medicinally in different parts 

 of the world, daily becomes more urgent; and hence the 

 work now presented to the public makes its appearance. 



Under existing arrangements it is chiefly from systema- 

 tical works treating of the British Flora, that the student 

 of Botany derives his acquaintance with species; and as 

 but a small number of the plants found wild in this 

 country are either officinal, or of much medical value, he 

 is practically excluded from any acquaintance with those 

 important exotic species which it is most desirable for him 

 so to study as to recognise them when he sees them. The 

 student therefore who is really anxious to study Botany 

 for those great purposes which render it so indispensable a 

 branch of medical science, has been obliged to remain 

 satisfied with such general knowledge as he can obtain 



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