PREFACE 



When an additional book appears in a field well provided 

 with existing texts, a few words of explanation are in order. 



In the first years of a liberal arts college program, in Junior 

 Colleges, and in Teacher Training Colleges, there has appeared 

 a need for introductory texts which give the student a survey 

 of certain fundamental concepts and their relationship to human 

 existence, as a part of the cultural education which will enrich 

 the lives of our citizens of tomorrow. Textbooks written with this 

 aim are, however, not numerous. The majority of elementary 

 texts have been written for the purpose of preparing the student 

 for later specialization in that particular subject. Such books 

 include by necessity much technical knowledge prerequisite for 

 understanding advanced details in that field; but often this is 

 irrelevant and uninteresting for the student who does not plan 

 further specialization in the subject. In fact, the student may well 

 be repelled by the content or organization of many existing 

 elementary texts even though he may have had a spark of inter- 

 est in the subject to begin with. It is a challenge to all college 

 subjects which have any cultural or practical value to meet this 

 trend in education by presenting courses which are ends in 

 themselves rather than stepping stones for those who wish to 

 devote more academic time or their entire lives to that particular 

 field. 



Perhaps no science has been so consistently bound by tradi- 

 tional presentation as elementary botany. Most of the existing 

 texts include information of little interest and doubtful value to 

 the average citizen, information that is often of theoretical 

 interest only to the professional botanist, and information 

 organized in a routine and stereotyped fashion as typical of texts 

 of the last century as of today. Botany can be presented as a 

 vital cultural subject, correlated with numerous everyday 

 experiences of the student. 



