62 JVew Publications. [Jan., 



Indeed the opinion here expressed seems to be supported by the 

 most enlightened view we can take of the utility of the study of 

 botany and natural history generally. Some, and even many, 

 have supposed that when a system is struck out which provides 

 the means for determining the names of species and genera, that 

 then all the wants of the student would be supplied. They found 

 their views, or notions, however, too narrow a basis, viz: that 

 names contain the essence of knowledge, and that when the name 

 of a thingis determined, that is sufficient. Names stand with such 

 persons in the place of ideas or knowledge. 



In the study of natural history the great object is, or should be, 

 to comprehend the plan or system upon which beings are organ- 

 ized — to see the links which bind the several parts together and 

 which make one great whole — to perceive relations and ends, an- 

 tecedents and consequents — or to put in movement that train of 

 thought by which may be evolved the connecting links which 

 bind together the high and the low, the finite and the infinite. 

 The discovery of analogies and affinities, indicated by a resem- 

 blance near or remote, form one of the immediate objects of this 

 study. The study of structure instead of names, constitutes one of 

 the principal objects in natural history. This is the road by which 

 the attainment of the great end is to be secured. It is not the aim 

 of the Flora to teach structural botany; but the arrangement be- 

 ing founded on structure, the study of the work must be through 

 the channels of structural botany. Views here expressed, howev- 

 er, are not intended to controvert the notion that names are not 

 things or that the name is unimportant. 



But to return to the consideration of the work itself. It ap- 

 pears from the preface to the Flora, that New York contains about 

 1450 species of flowering plants. Of woody plants 250 are em- 

 ployed in the arts or used as fuel. There are 150 plants which 

 possess medicinal properties. The introduced plants which have 

 become naturalized and grow wherever they please, amount to 

 150. Some of these are really the farmer's pests. They came 

 from Europe, mostly, and are there too known as great vagabonds, 

 which have stole into the crops and have found means to come 

 over the Atlantic in bags and barrels of choice grain in which 

 they have secreted themselves. Several of the naturalized planfs 

 are of the greatest consequence to us, witness the grasses, the 

 herds grass, red top, etc., which by their superior vital powers 

 take deep root in our soil and freqnently force out the useless 

 kinds, whose places they take and maintain, provided they are 

 duly nourished and cared for. Dr. Torrey's work furnishes clear 

 and detailed descriptions by means of which species may be iden- 

 tified; and the view which it is stated was taken at the com- 

 mencement of the work, was to secure this end. 



