PREFACE 



When the first edition of the " Elements of Botany " was exhausted and a 

 revision became necessary, it was deemed best to supply its place with two 

 books, one especially suited to the use of colleges and of schools of pharmacy 

 and medicine, and the other, a briefer and more elementary work, adapted to 

 the use of high schools and academies. 



The new books are, of course, outgrowths of the old one, and some pains 

 have been taken to conserve all those features which caused the latter to be so 

 favorably received by teachers. In the "College Botany," as well as in the 

 "Elements," the need of avoiding unnecessary technicalities, and of producing 

 a book which any student of fair intelligence may pursue with interest and 

 profit without the aid of a teacher, has been steadily kept in mind. If the 

 author has succeeded in this aim, the book, he believes, will not, on that 

 account, be any the less useful in the work of the class-room. 



As was stated in the preface to the previous edition, it has seemed to the 

 author that many of the text-books on botany were made unnecessarily difficult 

 for students, and that for this cause they are often repelled from a subject 

 which ought to be one of the most interesting in the whole range of science. 

 For this reason the common, as well as the scientific, names of plants have been 

 given, and, so far as possible, familiar plants have been selected for the illustra- 

 tion of structures. 



While, it is believed, the book covers all the ground that is desirable in a 

 college course, it must be understood that it is not written for specialists, but 

 rather to smooth the way for the many to the delightful study of plants, to 

 acquaint them with some of the more important facts of the science, and to 

 initiate them into the most approved methods of study. 



The order of treatment is also substantially the same as that in the former 

 edition, in which it was said " That order is not always best for the average 

 student that is best for the well disciplined mind. The logical arrangement of 

 a mass of scientific facts is not, necessarily, the logical order of inculcating 

 them. * * * In preparing this text-book, an effort has been made 

 to * * * present the elementary facts and principles of the subject 

 simply, clearly and with regard to the natural order of growth of the mental 

 faculties of the student." The aim has been to lead him from that which is 

 familiar to that which is less so — from the known to the unknown. He is, 

 therefore, first taught to observe the various organs of the higher plants — roots, 

 stems, leaves, etc., — without other aids than good eyes, deft fingers, a pocket- 

 knife and a magnifying lens, before he is introduced to the intricacies of cell- 

 structure, a good understanding of which requires the skillful use of the com- 

 pound microscope. 



For this work, very considerable portions of Parts I, II and III, of the 

 " Elements," have been rewritten, and much new matter added ; and Part IV 



