IV PREFACE. 



It is by no means indispensable for students to go through the volume 

 before commencing with the analysis of plants. When the proper season 

 for botanizing arrives, and when the first twelve Lessons have been gone 

 over, they may take up Lesson XXVIII. and the following ones, and pro- 

 ceed to study the various wild plants they find in blossom, in the manner 

 illustrated in Lesson XXX., &c., referring to the Glossary, and thence 

 to the pages of the Lessons, as directed, for explanations of the various 

 distinctions and terms they meet with. Their first essays will necessarily 

 be rather tedious, if not difficult; but each successful attempt smooths 

 the way for the next, and soon these technical terms and distinctions 

 will become nearly as familiar as those of ordinary language. 



Students who, having mastered this elementary work, wish to extend 

 their acquaintance with Vegetable Anatomy and Physiology, and to con- 

 sider higher questions about the structure and classification of plants, will 

 be prepared to take up the author's Botanical Text-Book, an Introduction 

 to Structural Botany, or other more detailed treatises. 



No care and expense have been spared upon the illustrations of this 

 volume; which, with one or two exceptions, are all original. They 

 were drawn from nature by Mr. Sprague, the most accurate of living 

 botanical artists, and have been as freely introduced as the size to which 

 it was needful to restrict the volume would warrant. 



To append a set of questions to the foot of each page, although not un- 

 usual in school-books, seems like a reflection upon the competency or the 

 faithfulness of teachers, who surely ought to have mastered the lesson be- 

 fore they undertake to teach it ; nor ought facilities to be afforded for 

 teaching, any more than learning, lessons by rote. A full analysis of the 

 contents of the Lessons, however, is very convenient and advantageous. 

 Such an Analysis is here given, in place of the ordinary table of con- 

 tents. This will direct the teacher and the learner at once to the leading 

 ideas and important points of each Lesson, and serve as a basis to ground 

 proper questions on, if such should be needed. 



ASA GRAY. 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, 

 January 1, 1857. 



*** Revised August, 1868, and alterations made adapting it to the new edition of 

 Manual, and to Field, Forest, and Garden Botany, to which this work is the proper 

 introduction and companion. 



A. G. 



