4 INTBODUCTION. 



mastered, and Botany presents special and eminent advantages 

 for this purpose. He is brought face to face with Nature, and 

 his first and constant work is the observation of phenom- 

 ena; not merely looking with the eye, but recognizing with 

 the 'mind. The science consists of a comprehensive system 

 of organized and closely-dependent truths, which it is the 

 business of the student to trace out and rediscover for him- 

 self. From the beginning he is engaged in comparing his 

 observations, and reasoning upon his facts. As nothing 

 can be done without terms, to mark his discriminations, 

 he commences their use at the outset ; and, as the language 

 of Botany is more precise than that of any other science, 

 there is constant drill in accuracy of description. As he ex- 

 tends his familiarity with plant characters, the work of com- 

 parison and grouping calls for a higher exercise of thought. 

 Finally, in classification, which is the goal of all his prepara- 

 tory study, he engages with problems of increasing complexity 

 the grouping of plants by masses of resemblances distinc- 

 tion of kinds and classes of things by likenesses and differ- 

 ences of unequal values, and the formation of groups in subor- 

 dination to each other all of which involve the highest ex- 

 ercise of judgment. 



Thus, the thorough study of Botany as a branch of Natu- 

 ral History, and as a means of education, not only " communi- 

 cates precision, clearness, and method to the intellect, through 

 a great range of its operations," but its discipline is corrective 

 of the most common defects of education, and is eminently 

 applicable in forming judgments upon the ordinary affairs of 

 life. Carelessness in observation, looseness in the application 

 of words, hasty inferences from partial data, and lack of 

 method in the contents of the mind, are common faults even 

 among the cultivated, and it is precisely these faults that the 

 study of botanical science, by the method here proposed, is 

 calculated to remedy. That the habit of systematic arrange- 

 ment, in which the study of botanical classification affords so 

 admirable a training, is equally valuable in methodizing all 

 the results of thought, is testified to by one of the most intel- 

 lectual and influential men of our time, Mr. John Stuart Mill. 

 He was a regular field botanist, and cultivated the subject 

 with a view to its important mental advantages ; and his 



