ELEMENTS OF BOTANY! 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS 



LESSON I. 



BOTANY. Definition of Plants Structure of Plants Nomen- 

 clature of Organs. 



1. Botany (formed from the Greek word botane, a plant) is 

 that division of Natural History which treats of vegetables. 



2. The science of Botany is divided into three branches : 

 namely, the Anatomy of Plants, Vegetable Physiology, and 

 Descriptive Botany, which last comprises the classification of 

 plants and their especial history. 



3. Botany, therefore, does not consist, as is commonly ima- 

 gined by the ignorant, in merely " getting by heart" a great 

 number of names of plants, and of being able to apply their 

 names to the objects to which they belong ; but in a knowledge 

 of the plants themselves, of their organization, their growth, their 

 manner of living, their properties, and the relations they bear to 

 each other, as well as the characters by which they are distin- 

 guished from each other. 



4. Dejinition of Plants. Plants are beings organized for 

 living ; but they are not endowed, like animals, with the faculties 

 of sensation and of performing voluntary motion. 



5. Like animals, these beings are readily distinguished from 

 inorganic bodies by their mode of structure, by their nutritive 

 function, through the means of which their substance is renewed 

 and augmented, by their origin, and by the limited duration of 

 their existence. 



6. They differ from animals not only in being destitute of the 

 functions of relation, but also in many other respects. Almost 

 all vegetables live fixed in the soil ; they absorb, from without, 

 nutritive matters which they assimilate, without previously di- 



1. What is Botany? 



2. How is the science of Botany divided ? 



3. What is to be learned by studying Botany ? 



4. What are plants ? 



5. How are plants distinguished from inorganic bodies ? 



6. How do plants differ from animals ? 



(9) 



