AN 



ELEMENTAEY COURSE 



OF 



BOTANY. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



SECT. 1. OBJECTS AND SUBDIVISIONS OF THE SCIENCE. 



JDOTANY is that department of Natural Science which deals with 

 Plants, their conformation, life-history, relations one to another 

 and to the universe of which they form a part. No absolute dis- 

 tinction can be drawn between plants and animals. 



At the outset we must be content with the conception of a plant as fur- 

 nished by the previous experience of the student ; this will be enlarged 

 and at the same time rendered clearer by the study of the following 

 pages ; and, after the more important principles of physiology have been 

 expounded, a clearer notion of the relation of plants to other living beings 

 as well as to unorganized or mineral substances may be obtained. 



Botany is divisible into two principal departments : the Natural 

 History of Plants, which deals with the characteristic phenomena 

 presented by the individual kinds of plants ; and Philosophical 

 Botany, the object of which is to ascertain the general facts and laws 

 which pertain to more or less considerable assemblages of plants. 



Philosophical Botany represents the pure science ; and it is with the 

 departments of this we have chiefly to do in this work. The Natural 

 History of Plants, which in early times constituted the whole science, 

 resolves itself, at the present time, into a number of distinct branches of 

 Applied or Practical Botany, 



Philosophical Botany includes the following departments : 



I. Morphology, or the Comparative Anatomy of plants, consisting 

 of the study of the outward forms of the diverse parts of plants. 



II. Elementary or Philosophical Anatomy: the study of the 

 tissues of which plants are composed, and the intimate structure 

 of their several parts. 



B 



