INTRODUCTION. 21 



engraving or other purposes ; VIII. Fodder and other 

 agricultural products ; IX. Miscellaneous substances 

 not belonging to either of these classes. 



The Systematic Synopsis will render this grouping 

 as simple to the botanist as to the technologist. 



PART I. FOODS, FOOD-STUFFS, AND FOOD- 

 ADJUNCTS. 



IN no class of our wants is our dependence on the 

 vegetable kingdom so strikingly seen as in our food. 

 With the exceptions of water and salt, all our food is, 

 either directly or indirectly, of vegetable origin. 



There is hardly any class of plants, or any part of 

 the plant, that has not contributed in some form to our 

 food supply. Ferns, mosses, and club-mosses afford 

 little or no nutrient matters ; but, not to speak of can- 

 died violets and rose-petals, the fleshy corollas of the 

 Mahwa (Bassia latifolia, Roxb.) form an important 

 article of diet to men and animals in India, and have 

 been imported into this country for the latter ; whilst 

 in the genus Typha^ of which the common Reed-maces 

 are well known British species, even the pollen has 

 been employed, both in Scinde and in New Zealand, as 

 a bread-stuff.* The stigmas of the Saffron Crocus 

 (Crocus sativuS) Bert.), the cultivation of which in Eng- 

 land is extinct, and the unopened flower-buds of the 

 Clove (Caryophyllus aromaticus, L.) and the Caper (Cap- 

 parisspinosa, L.), the fleshy peduncles of the Fig (Ficus 

 Carica, L.) or the Cashew-nut (Anacardium occidental > 

 L.), and the succulent bases of the bracts in the in- 



* Lindley, Society of Arts Lectures on the Exhibition of 

 1851, p. 220. 



