iv PREFACE. 



annually delivered to college students. In general 

 plan, Part I. follows pretty nearly that of Sachs' ad- 

 mirable "Lehrbuch," and in many instances it has 

 seemed to me that I could not do better than to 

 adopt the particular treatment which a subject has 

 received at the hands of the distinguished German 

 botanist. This has been rendered possible through 

 the liberality of my publishers, and the courtesy of 

 Engelmann of Leipzig, the publisher of many of 

 Sachs' works, by which many of the cuts of the 

 "Lehrbuch" are here reproduced. This book will 

 thus, to a considerable extent, serve as an introduc- 

 tion to that work. Free use has also been made of 

 the recent works of De Bary, Hofmeister, Strasbur- 

 ger, Nageli, Schwendener, and others, to whose writ- 

 ings numerous references are made. 



In Part II. the general disposition of the lower 

 plants is a considerable modification of that proposed 

 by Sachs ; that of the higher plants is made to con- 

 form to the system of classification in vogue in this 

 country and in England, as outlined in Dr. J. D. 

 Hooker's "Synopsis of the Classes, Sub-classes, Co- 

 horts and Orders," in the English edition of 

 Le Maout and Decaisne's "Traite Generale de Botan- 

 ique," and as given much more fully in Bentham and 

 Hooker's still unfinished "Genera Plantarum." The 

 notes upon the economic values of the more impor- 

 tant plants of each order are based upon my own lec- 

 tures upon Economic Botany. I have also freely 

 used the similar notes in Le Maout and Decaisne's 

 work, cited above ; Balfour's " Class-Book of Bot- 

 any," Archer's "Economic Botany," Smith's "Do- 

 mestic Botany," Laslett's "Timber and Timber 

 Trees," etc., etc. 



Necessarily, there is but little that is really new in a 

 treatise like this. Aside from a more or less important 

 and original arrangement of the matter, so as to 



