PREFACE. 



THE work now laid before the public is a fourth edition of 

 the Author's " Outline of the First Principles of Botany," 

 much extended and, it is hoped, improved. That work was 

 written for the use of students, and entirely for the purpose 

 of enabling them to fix correctly in their minds the more 

 important points which the teacher brings before them in an 

 academical course. When facts are mixed up with extended 

 discussions, and rapidly adverted to, either in a lecture-room 

 or in a written dissertation, the beginner is apt to lose sight of 

 the exact nature of an argument, and is unable to distinguish 

 with certainty the points upon which it is most material for 

 him to fix his attention. That there existed a want of such 

 a work has been sufficiently proved by the many editions the 

 original Outline has passed through, in various European lan- 

 guages : indeed, while the present new edition is in the press, 

 advice has been received of the translation of the work into 

 Hungarian. The propositions which it contained were such 

 as it is of the most indispensable importance for a student to 

 understand ; and were all, apparently, deducible from the 

 evidence which had at that time been collected by Botanists. 

 The wish of the Author was to sketch a slight but accurate 

 outline, the details of which were to be filled up by the 

 reader himself, who, for this purpose, was referred to the 

 Author's more extended Introductions to Botany. 



The original " Outline " contained nothing more than the 

 fundamental propositions upon which the principles of Organic 

 and Physiological Botany depend ; but, when two editions 

 had been exhausted, the Author was induced, by the favour 

 with which the book had been received, and by its recognized 

 utility, notwithstanding its many defects, to combine with it a 



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