250 INDEX I. 



Besides these all-important products of the seed, 

 others are formed in the stems and leaves of plants, of 

 which no account hitherto has been given in Proserpina. 

 I delay any extended description of these until we have 

 examined the structure of wood itself more closely ; this 

 intricate and difficult task having been remitted (p. 195) 

 to the days of coming spring ; and I am well pleased that 

 my younger readers should at first be vexed with no 

 more names to be learned than those of the vegetable 

 productions with which they are most pleasantly acquaint- 

 ed : but for older ones, I think it well, before closing 

 the present volume, to indicate, with warning, some of 

 the obscurities, and probable fallacies, with which this 

 vanity of science encumbers the chemistry, no less than 

 the morphology, of plants. 



Looking back to one of the first books in which our 

 new knowledge of organic chemistry began to be dis- 

 played, thirty years ago, I find that even at that period 

 the organic elements which the cuisine of the laboratory 

 had already detected in simple Indigo, were the follow- 

 ing : 



