122 CONCLUSION. 



much better calculated to afford a real insight 

 into the Vegetable Kingdom. It would be im- 

 practicable within the limits of a work like the 

 present, to give any detailed account of either 

 system, especially of the natural arrangement, 

 whose characters, not being arbitrary, require 

 in order to be understood at all, a fulness of 

 description inconsistent with brevity. Neither 

 would such an account of botanical systems 

 come within the twofold object of this little 

 treatise, whose aim is to give the reader such 

 an acquaintance with the wonderful structure 

 of a large part of the world around him, as may 

 enhance his pleasure in contemplating it; and 

 still more to draw his attention to that unity of 

 purpose, palpable in the whole provision for the 

 sustenance and comfort of all his fellow inhabi- 

 tants on our earth. If this work and its prede- 

 cessor on Organic Chemistry, have been read 

 attentively, it will have been seen that water, 

 the soil of the earth, and the action of the air, 

 furnish the materials from which plants obtain 

 their nourishment ; that without their interven- 

 tion, the whole inferior animal race would have 

 been destitute of food ; and that man not only 

 obtains a large portion of his sustenance imme- 

 diately from them, but that they serve to elabo- 



