INTRODUCTION. IX 



The whole study of life, in earlier periods of man, was necessary to 

 acquire a knowledge of fruits and plants essential to health and exis- 

 tence ; and the longest was incapable of affording an approach to the 

 comforts and luxuries now known and enjoyed. An hundred genera- 

 tions devoted to this object were unequal to what may now be acquired 

 in a few hours' quiet reading reading which, unlike much of that of 

 the present day, contributes immediately to the length, utility and plea- 

 sures of existence, which enlarges our views of creative wisdom and 

 power and gives no false coloring to life which improves the morals, 

 taste and judgment and is eminently useful and instructive in all the 

 individual and social interests of life. 



A glance at some of the uses of a few vegetable products in the com- 

 mon purposes of life the arts and sciences in commerce and manu- 

 factures agriculture the fine arts the various purposes of clothing 

 in medicine for fuel for the food of man and animals, &c., exhib- 

 its a general, though imperfect, idea of their importance. The use of 

 cotton in the annual fabrication of hundreds of millions of yards of cloth, 

 worn for comfort and ornament by as many millions of people of flax, 

 in the manufacture of linen so generally worn throughout the civilized 

 world of the mulberry plant, which feeds thousands of millions of 

 worms for the production of silk, worn so extensively by the people of 

 all civilized nations the roots of plants, the chief food of people in a 

 large part of the world and used in numerous ways as medicines, and as 

 food for cattle, (the tuberous and bulbous, as the potato, onion, carrot, 

 beet, turnip, etc., entering so largely into the mass of wholesome nu- 

 triment) the leaves of plants, widely used for dyes, food, &c the 

 bark of trees, used so extensively for tanning, for dyes, cordage and 

 food the gums and resins so important in the various useful and orna- 

 mental arts, for medicinal purposes, etc the juices of plants, so val- 

 uable and important, distilled and concrete, as sugars, syrups, or molas- 

 ses, or as beverages and drinks of numerous kinds and for medicinal 



uses, etc the vegetable alkalies, so important in the arts and sciences 



the various vegetable oils, volatile and essential, extensively used in 

 the useful and ornamental arts of life, for domestic purposes, for medi- 

 cines and for essences in perfumery, etc the innumerable varieties 

 of wood used and indispensible in house building, ship building, cabinet 

 work, for musical instruments, domestic articles, both useful and orna- 

 mental and, in truth, for every art of life, for fuel, for the comfort and 

 preservation of life and in the preparation of food, etc hemp for sail 

 cloth and ropes, indispensable in commerce, for ticking, bagging, cords, 

 twine, etc., and so much used for all practical purposes in society the 

 rf.eds, greatly used in the arts for chair bottoms, umbrellas and for their 

 juices, as sugar, treacle, or distilled into spirits of various kinds pine 

 pitch, tar and rosin, as used in ship building, for producing gas for 

 lighting cities and for numerous purposes in the arts seeds for the pro- 



