THE ELEMENTS 



OP 



STRUCTURAL BOTANY 



1. The study of Botany is commonly rendered unat- 

 tractive to the beginner by the order in which the parts 

 of the subject are presented to him. His patience be- 

 comes exhausted by the long interval which must neces- 

 sarily elapse before he is in a position to do any practical 

 work for himself. In accordance with the usual plan, 

 some months are spent in committing to memory a 

 mass of terms descriptive of the various modifications 

 which the organs of plants undergo ; and not until the 

 student has mastered these, and j^erhaps been initiated 

 into the mysteries of the fibro- vascular system, is he 

 permitted to examine a plant as a whole. In this 

 little work, we purpose, following the example of some 

 recent writers, to reverse this order of things, and at 

 the outset to put into the learner's hands some com- 

 mon plants, and to lead him, by his own examination 

 of these, to a knowledge of their various organs — to 



